The Amazing Absorbing Boy

by Rabindranath Maharaj

  “Very nice,” I lied. I wondered whether it was some kind of medicinal tea like the fever-grass brew my mother used to force me to drink.

  He waited till I had a couple more sips before he continued his story. “The family forgot why they had come to Canada. The two daughters went to clubs and got boyfriends and the son began to drink and smoke. And what did the parents do?” The genie drew closer and pulled his feet up on the couch as if this was the good part of the story. “They encouraged it because they thought it was sign of progress. One weekend the entire family packed into their minivan for a trip. A vacation, you understand. Somewhere between Barrie and Sudbury, the minivan hit a tractor-trailer. No one survived.”

  The genie began to clap. Mr. Bunglevalley returned the book to the shelf. And I remembered Auntie Umbrella’s observation about how all the victims of vehicle accidents and fires and drowning were immigrants. I felt this was the point of Mr. Bunglevalley’s story but he said, “There is a price to be paid for living such a life, you understand? When you forget the rules, there are always these reminders.” He pointed to the ceiling and the genie looked up.

  I don’t know if he was throwing words at me because of Canella but in any case, it was a horrible story. I told them I had to get to work early the next day and I hurried out from their apartment. I became worried for Dilara. I was more determined than ever to make contact. Make contact. I liked the phrase and it made me feel like a shadowy hero with a secret identity. Shy and often puzzled on the surface but understanding everything, all the confusing Canadian customs and laws, in my hero identity. Maybe something like Dr. Bat’s Captain Hindustani. In the gas station, I hit on the name, Petroman, and I had to smile before I got back to the serious business of planning to actually meet Dilara.

  Each night I waited by the curb and ducked away from cigarette butts. I hoped Dilara would see me and get out from the black car. She never did but the smoking teenagers became a bit friendlier, and once one of them bounced a basketball in my direction and shouted out, “Over here, man.” I threw the ball, and at that same instant, the black car pulled up. That night Dilara was in the front seat and before the car drove off, I saw her fingers tapping the window. In Trinidad we called that gesture a bye-bye, and there it was flirty temporary goodbye that a girl might give to her boyfriend. I had no idea if it was the same in Dilara’s culture, whatever that was.

  I took the genie’s arm. Once again, I was invited into Mr. Bunglevalley’s apartment. Once again, the woman brought a tray of tea but not directly to us. There was another story about an immigrant family. They didn’t get into an accident like the last family but ended up fighting among themselves and living like cats and dogs. “They forgot the rules, you understand,” he said again. “They forgot who they were and where they had come from.”

  The genie lapped his tea and I saw his tongue moving around in his mouth like a macaw.

  That night my father added to his catfish and bait parable. “These people next door, you know anything about them? You know exactly who they could be hooked-up with? When you ass get bag up good and proper don’t drag me in it because I will say I don’t know nothing about you.” I didn’t say anything but all the while I was thinking that in Canada, foreigners always seemed to hate other foreigners. It was the sort of insight that Petroman might have and when I smiled at that, my father got even angrier.

  Over the next few days, I realized I had to find some other way to make contact with Dilara. I began to plan but knew that none of the plots would work: they were the sort of fantastic ideas only Petroman would come up with. It was frustrating because I had wasted about three weeks and the only results were these lectures about doomed families from Mr. Bunglevalley. Then one night the black car had two extra passengers. They were younger than the genie but were dressed in the same white robes. They got out of the car. One held the genie’s arm and the other beckoned to the driver. All four went into the building. Dilara was alone.

  I stood at the curb until they went inside before I walked over and told Dilara hello. She appeared a little nervous, staring up at the balcony, but I had waited too long. I told her I had missed her at the coffee shop and asked if she was working elsewhere. After a while, she shook her head. Then she told me point-blank that I should leave. Maybe it was the Petroman stupidness in my head that gave me the courage to ask if she was in college or just waiting for another job. I almost added, “Or trapped.”

  She reached by the door and began to wind up the glass but just before I was completely shut out she whispered, “The reference library.”

  I had to wait until the weekend before I headed for the place. I loitered on all the floors—a little surprised there were so many people sitting before computers—before I settled in the little eating section on the first floor. Two Saturdays later, I saw her. She was talking to the girl who sold the coffee and I noticed how alike they seemed. The same orangeish colour and the same pointed features and big eyes. Except that the other girl was wearing a stylish veil. When Dilara spotted me, she leaned over the counter and whispered to the girl. I went to an empty table and took the newspaper lying in its top. There were a few articles about architecture and other boring things but in any case I was using the newspaper just as a cover. Like a shadowy rescuer would.

  “So you are here, in library.” Gone was her impatience. Now she was smiling mischievously.

  “Yes, I am here.”

  “Can I sit near with you?” she asked me. I pulled the empty chair a little closer to me and she placed her purse on the table and sat. “So for what purpose you come to library?” She glanced back at the coffee girl, who seemed to be giggling. This was not how I had expected our meeting to be.

  “What is your purpose?”

  “I ask question first, but I tell you, still.” She reached for her purse and took out a necklace with small green stones leading to a crystal butterfly. “These I make. Sometimes bird, sometimes flowers. And my friend sell for me.” She waved to the coffee girl. “So I make a little money. Not much, only little. And what about you?”

  “I work at a gas station.”

  “Ooh. Gas station.” She made it seem like an important job. “What trade … no that is not word … what task do you have at station?”

  As I recited the list of tasks—pumping gas, cleaning windscreens, checking oil, sweeping the service area at the end of my shift—I realized how boring it sounded. Her jewellery job was far more interesting, and after our short conversation, while I was walking to Regent Park, I imagined Dilara in a room bright with dancing, flickering light, and gold and silver dust swirling around in rainbow patterns over her head. And some of the dust settling on her hair and shoulders and fingers. This was the sort of room where someone could easily fly or make magical wishes or talk with sprites. Thinking of her like this, in such a setting, gave me my own butterflies, chasing around in my stomach. I could barely wait till our next meeting.

  It was a Saturday again and when I got to the library she was chatting once more with the coffee girl. When she spotted me she waved in her flirty way, and after a couple minutes, came over to my table. “And so, you come to library again?”

  “Yes, I am doing some research on jewels.”

  “Is this true?” Her eyes widened. It was a little joke that a boy who was putting the moves on a girl might make but I let it rest. And I was glad that I did because she told me that in her country—whose name she never mentioned—women wore gems instead of makeup, and little girls were taught by their mothers to make insect jewellery with corals and jade and jasper and other magical-sounding gems. She told me that in her homeland, young men proposed to their girlfriends with these homemade necklaces instead of rings. “I say enough for time,” she told me. “Now you say.”

  What could I say to match her jade and jasper and engagement revelations? The only thing I knew about marriage was from my mother who complained that it was it was “only icing and no cake” and a trap for foolish people to fall into. N
ot even Petroman could transform this dreary view into something magical. “What do you want me to say?” I told her at last.

  She too got quiet and I felt I was losing her. I saw her playing with the strap of her purse and assumed she was getting ready to leave. “Do you want to see?” She was looking over my head in the direction of the glass elevator. She took out a necklace with speckled beads, which looked like hummingbird eggs. “I call it Caribbing island dream.”

  “Caribbean?”

  “Yes. Say again, please.”

  I repeated the word a couple times and for some reason it broke down my shyness. I told her I was from there and I began to talk about the night lights over the sea and the corals washed ashore from the reef and the gold-coloured sand and the cool morning mist on the mountains and fruits and berries which were found only deep in the forest. I told her of the howler monkeys and macaws and leatherback turtles and the pitch lake and the old castles in Port of Spain and the wrecks where I had heard there might be treasure left behind by Bluebeard and Sir Henry Morgan. I was really surprised that I remembered so much and that I was able to push aside all the other bad things I had heard from Uncle Boysie and my mother.

  “I love to live in Caribbing island. Why for you leave?”

  “My mother died. My father lives here.”

  “Oh, it is too sad. My mother, she is sick too. So far, far away. But what it is to do? I have to make best. So I make jewels and wait for papers. You have?” I didn’t know what she was talking about so I shook my head. “It is good to have. My mother, she thinks I have. Yes, I write and tell her so. Some people they help but …”

  I was even more confused. I felt she was referring to Mr. Bunglevalley and his gang but I didn’t know what papers she was talking about and how they were helping her. “But what?”

  “It is not good for me to say.”

  She seemed a little disturbed so I changed the topic somewhat. “What will happen when you get the papers?”

  “Oh. I go to school and get regular jobs. And then I send for mother to come live with me. It is my dream all the time for such a thing.”

  I recalled her mentioning her mother at the coffee shop. “The papers will do all that?”

  “You don’t know?” She seemed surprised by this, and for the next half an hour or so she explained all these complicated facts about landed immigrants and student visas and work permits and citizenship and refugee status. As I listened, some of my father’s threats began to make more sense and Dilara clarified his most common threat when she asked if I was here in Canada illegally. She seemed so shocked by my status that I began to feel nervous and frightened, to tell the truth. She told me that I should apply to be a refugee and I remembered Roy and Norbert bad-mouthing all these refugees who were living in palaces and “milking the system.”

  When I left her that night, there were no visions of swirling gold dust and jewels. I didn’t know how I would approach this topic with my father because I could just imagine how vexed he would be.

  It was worse than that! “Status eh. You think that all you have to do is walk inside a office like Lord Laloo and say, ‘Give me status right now,’ and somebody will type it out in a hurry and push it in your pocket? Where the hell you getting these ideas from? From them cultist downstairs? Then why the ass you don’t ask them to help you?” On and on he went. That night I was awakened a few times by his door slamming.

  At work, I wondered if I should discuss this papers-complication business with Paul or Dr. Bat but I knew that instead of explaining they would most likely come up with some stupid story. I couldn’t ask Mr. Bunglevalley either, because he was so critical of all immigrants. In the end, I turned to Dilara. And I was glad that I did because she didn’t act as if I was stupid or childish for not knowing all these important things. She told me that illegal people had to live in the shadows always because they could be deported at any time. The employers knew this so they hired these people to work for them for next to nothing. There were many such people who had to do these jobs even though they were educated. Although I was not educated, I wondered whether this was why my boss at Petrocan always paid me in cash. Dilara then explained that parents could sponsor their children and paused as if she was wondering why I couldn’t use that route. She told me that she was here on a student visa, which would expire in half a year. The coffee girl was also on a student visa and both of them had applied for extensions. “School … it is very hard to pay so many fees. My friend, she say we should teach making jewellery. But it is only joke she make.” She glanced over to the girl who cupped her hand to her mouth and whispered something that neither I nor Dilara could hear. “My friend is … how to say it … plenty mischief. She say last week that you are cute boy.”

  I felt a little ashamed to be so close to her while she was saying this and tried to pass it off with a joke. “You are cute girl, too.”

  I expected she would blush or blink quickly and stammer or make her own joke but she asked me seriously, “What cute in me you find?”

  I looked quickly at her long black hair and her thin nose and her full lower lip and her round eyes that made her look as if she was always surprised. To tell the truth she looked a little like an orange bird. I had never noticed that before. I chose the safest feature, the one she must have been complimented on many times before. “Your eyes. They are always asking so many questions.”

  “And sad, sometimes, you find?”

  I shook my head.

  “It is good that my eyes show all these things.” But she was sounding sad rather than satisfied, and for some reason I thought of the woman in Mr. Bunglevalley’s apartment. “Soon it will be all.”

  She got quiet and I asked her, “These people who live in my apartment complex … are they helping you to get your student visa?”

  “It is not a good topic for me to talk.”

  “I went to their place. There is a woman there. And an old”—I almost said genie—“man.”

  She seemed surprised that I had been there. “They are friends to you?”

  “I help the old man up the stairs.”

  “Yes, I see.” She looked to the coffee girl who was bent beneath the counter, wiping the glass. Finally, she told me, “The man, he get me and friend into his school. It is small school but too many rules. Maybe he get you into school, too.”

  I remembered my strict principal from Mayaro Composite and told her, “Too many rules.”

  She replied immediately as if she had anticipated my reply. “Oh, with boy it is not same. They get all the freedoms.”

  I wondered why she had been so reluctant to talk about Mr. Bunglevalley and this simple school matter. The Petroman thoughts of rescuing her suddenly seemed more silly than usual. In a way, she was luckier than me, making her jewellery and having a close friend and going to school and getting this help from Mr. Bunglevalley. So the following Saturday we chatted mostly about her jewellery, which got her pleased and talkative, and as they were closing up, I bought a butterfly necklace for ten dollars. While we were leaving the library her friend asked me, “You give back this to girlfriend?” She leaned over and said something in another language and Dilara bent her head and walked faster. At the Bloor subway, she told me that jewellery had great powers and I thought of Green Lantern’s ring and felt we were so alike. That night I was in as good a mood as I had ever been since I came to Canada.

  But I never saw her again.

  For three Saturdays, I waited in the library, hoping she would show up. In the meantime, Mr. Bunglevalley and his genie disappeared from their apartment, just like that. It was strange because it was not even the end of the month so they had lost their deposit. I wanted to ask the coffee girl about all of this but every time I glanced at her, she would look away. I felt she did not want any questions but on the third Saturday I was so desperate I didn’t care any longer. I asked her point-blank and she frowned as if she didn’t want to say anything to me. I asked her again. She had a damp sponge in her ha
nd, which she was squeezing. She told me that there was “a big trouble.” I tried to follow her as best I could, because she was grasping for the proper English words. There was some sort of problem with Mr. Bunglevalley’s school. It had never been licensed. Many of the students were under investigation. Mr. Bunglevalley himself was under some type of probe. “The school … it is not legal,” she told me and then as if she had said too much, she clammed up. I asked about Dilara. She pressed her palms against the sponge as if she was creating some new shape. “Now she must start over.”

  A sinking thought hit me. “Is she in Canada?”

  “You have necklace still?” The question surprised me and I told her that I had carried it in my pocket ever since. For some reason she brightened up a bit and she said, “She is best at making butterflies. Yes, and flowers. Her fingers, they know everything.”

  I took out the necklace. “Please give this to her.”

  “No, you keep.”

  I left the necklace there on the counter. On my way to the subway, I nearly changed my mind and returned for it, but when I though that Dilari might be happy to see it again, I continued on my way.

  In the weeks that followed, while I was cleaning some woman’s windscreen at Petrocan I would catch some gesture, maybe slim fingers clasping the steering wheel or pushing back a strand of hair, and I would be reminded of Dilara, who would never know she had encouraged me to get this job more than four months earlier or that she had got me thinking of signing up at some college so that I could get a student visa. And when the woman drove off, I would feel that some little bit of Dilara had remained there in the gas station, and I would imagine her in a room made bright with dancing, flickering dust as she carefully carved out her birds and butterflies and flowers.

  I continued going to the library on Saturdays—still nursing the frail hope of meeting Dilara. One Saturday I joined a group of people who looked like foreigners. They were sitting on chairs arranged on the first floor. An Indian woman was talking about job banks and resumés and college diplomas. At the end of her speech, she handed out some slim booklets. On the last two pages were the lists of community colleges in Toronto. The following Saturday another woman lectured on illegal immigrants. She said they were forced to live like ghosts. Her speech got me frightened and I did not take her booklet even though she ended by saying that “illegal immigrant” was the wrong term and should be replaced instead by “non-status individuals.”