Uncle Boysie was saying, “You mother woulda be happy, boy. Happy like pappy that you working and studying with some plan in mind. You know …” He paused.
“Know what?” I had to ask him.
“You know, Sylvie … you mother always wanted you to come up here but deep down in she heart, she was worried like hell that you would end up like you father. When she first get sick she give me a letter for you father. She make me promise over and over that I would tell him to send for you and God will punish me if I lie, so I have to tell you that I hold back on that letter for months. Had it right below me cash register all the time. I believe Sylvie write it when she realize that …” His voice went a little downhill. “In that sick state, still pretending that he was regularly sending down money. Is only one thing that make me contact you father. One.”
Because he got quiet I prodded him, “What, Uncle Boysie?”
“When you father pick up he ass and leave, the plan was that he would send for the two of allyou. One year run into two, and two into three, and still you mother keep telling everybody that it was just a matter of time. I think she stop believing after a while and it was just shame that full she mouth with that talk. Sometimes when I take a little too much grog … late-late in the night I does feel that she didn’t dead from any damn cancer. She just get tired of waiting.” He crossed his legs and pulled up his socks. “After a while Sylvie wasn’t sure what she was waiting for. She just fall in the habit.”
For a full five minutes I went over the question that had been bothering me for as long as I could remember. I felt embarrassed to ask but decided I might never get the opportunity again. “In the beginning, did my parent ever …” But I couldn’t continue.
Maybe Uncle Boysie knew what was going through my mind because he answered right off the bat, as if he had come to Canada especially to reveal this to me. “You father was always walking around with his head in the cloud as if he was better than everybody else. He used to wear these raincoats in the hot sun. Once he borrow or buy a old Vauxhall and even after it was haul away by the wrecker he continue wearing fancy driving gloves. He always wanted to be different. One time he decide to open up a dentist business and for a month in Mayaro it had teeth flying out from people mouth or splitting in two or clamping shut on a piece of meat. Nearly kill half the village.” He smiled a bit but immediately got serious once more. “That was when he meet you mother. But I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it one bit. I do some investigations.”
I had to prod him as he seemed lost in his recollection. “What you found out?”
“Well, boy, I discover that you father was born in Sangre Grande and he had no idea who his own father was. But you know how mauvais langue Trinidad is, so it had a ton of rumours. According to these rumour, his father was anybody from the Portogee shopkeeper to a drunkard fella who was always falling down on the road. Anyways, I find out that you father get kick around from captain to cook when he was growing up. From pillar to post.”
“And what about Auntie Umbrella?”
“She get adopt by some Cyanadian missionary. Adopt or servant, I really can’t say. But I think she had a different father. Some black stumpy fella, most likely.”
“How come nobody ever tell me any of this before?”
“Eh? You know how worried I use to be that you mother might one day reveal this to you. But she and all probably didn’t believe anything bad about him. At least not in the beginning.” And right there in the living room Uncle Boysie told me how my father would come to his shop where my mother was working at the time, and chat her up with all his big ideas. “One day I get out me gilpin and threaten to planass him on the spot if he didn’t stop his foolishness. The next morning you mother disappear. You sure you want to hear all this, boy?”
“Yes, yes.”
“All right then. You is a big man now. You peeing froth. You going to strip place and thing. So as I was saying, I look up and down the island for two weeks before I discover she was in Sangre Grande with you father. I send down a police pardner to rough him up a little bit and bring back you mother home. I thought that was the end of it but you mother begin to sulk like anything. As if I was public enemy number one. She was about eighteen or nineteen then. I had no choice, Sammy.”
Uncle Boysie told me how he bought the property on Church Street, renovated the old house on the premise and set up my parents there. He patiently described the process—replacing wood with concrete, building a soakaway at the back, augmenting the foundation, changing the roof, repainting—which was not interesting at all so I interrupted to ask what had caused my father to leave.
“What happen was that he start feeling tie-down. He start complaining about ball and chain.” I remembered an earlier statement of my uncle in which he had likened a dreamer with no dreams to a madman. But I also wondered if it was because my father had been kicked around from captain to cook himself. “Everything I expected to happen, happen. The one thing I didn’t predict was that after he leave, you mother would blame herself for everything. That was why she never complain. And why she use to act as if one day he would come back to her. She had no choice. Sometimes it make us happier to believe something we know is a damn lie because we does come out better in that picture. Like you and you Timex watch. I know you always believe you father send it down for you but I buy it from a fella in Port of Spain. Everybody use to call him Iron Mike because his entire hand was covered in metal watchbands. Anyways, that is old-time news. You must be throw away that watch years now.” He shook his head and in a suddenly jovial voice added, “You see what one night in the Pink Pussyah does do? Make me tongue get loose and ownway. Is a dangerous place. Maybe we should visit some other pussyah place instead.” He got up wearily, removed his coat and draped it against the sofa, and unrolled the foam.
“I think you should use the bedroom tonight,” I told him. He seemed about to protest so I said, “I have to get up early tomorrow and I don’t want to disturb you.”
Even though he asked, “You sure, boy?” I could see he was relieved.
As he was walking to the bedroom I asked him, “The envelope you gave my father … was it the deed for the house in Mayaro?”
“Yeah. My part of the bargain.” He pulled in the door.
In the night I wondered if my father had been crying the previous day when he learned my mother had been waiting and waiting and waiting. I wanted to believe that. Just like I wanted to believe the Timex watch had been his gift.
Chapter Seventeen
GOAT AND SIT
The next morning I heard Uncle Boysie quarrelling in the bathroom. “How long I blasted have to wait for the warm water to appear?”
“Just leave it on for a while.”
Five minutes or so later I got worried. I knocked then opened the door. Uncle Boysie was in the bathtub, the water lapping his neck and bales of steam swirling around his head. He looked like a fat ogre resting in a grotto. An hour later he was outfitted in his fur coat, his hair slicked back like a gangster, and smelling of coconut oil. He started whistling a calypso in the elevator and I was struck once more by the shift in his mood. In the lobby I noticed the Creole woman gazing from her mailbox to him and she seemed a little confused when he told her, “Is a fine day outside, madam lady senorita. Weather for leather.” It was cold and grey and clammy looking with the sort of dampness that seeped past coats and trousers.
“So where you want to go today, Uncle Boysie?”
“Maybe we could check out a wrestling match with André the Giant.
“I think he died.”
“Scheme, boy, scheme. He will come back in a couple months as André the Midget.” I decided to not argue. At the corner of Dundas he noticed a little white dog with a sweater and asked, “So what them puppy does wear in summer? Bikini and sliders?” In the streetcar I inquired about his proposed itinerary once more and he asked, “How far this bus does go?”
“To the subway going south to Union. From there you could
take a train.”
“To Montreal?”
I decided to not mention Via Rail. “To Oshawa in the east.”
“But ain’t Ottawa close to Montreal?”
“That is a different place.”
In Union Station he kept bouncing into busy travellers and I was afraid he might begin to quarrel but he was in a good mood. Reading the Go Transit sign, he said, “Goat-and-sit,” as if he expected the station to be lined with animals waiting for the next train. We bought two coffees and the woman, plumpish with a pleasant face, told him, “Have a nice day, hon.”
At the counter he startled the young black clerk by saying, “Two tickets, hon.” Once we had settled on the upper berth I explained that “hon” was not typically a man-to-man thing. But he was busy gazing at the bulldozers and excavators. “Like they pulling down the city or what?” he asked. And a couple minutes later, “Look at all them ‘bandon train park up in that old garage. I wonder if they will sell them?” He speculated on how he might use them in Trinidad: a couple carriages on the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway stocked with doubles and delicacies, and a few close to the Mayaro market loaded up with soursop and sapodilla and coconuts. I had this vision of green and white carriages lining all the roads in Trinidad with vendors peeping from the windows. Auntie Umbrella had showed me a side to Canada that I had pushed aside because of my worries at the time, but Uncle Boysie was focusing only on the odd aspects. “That lake frozen no ass, boy. It look like a piece of the sky just drop off and land they.” And later. “But ay ay, how all them house so similar? You could easily go to the wrong house by mistake. Different pussyah.” He glanced at a huge sign. “Wait a minute, Gooberdhan from Rio Claro have business here too?”
“Is Gooberham.”
“And what I say?” When we approached Pickering I was tempted to visit Javier and Carmen but remembered Uncle Boysie saying that my tattoo girl would eat me raw. Soon we approached Ajax and I felt a bit of regret about leaving Carmen’s city. “How you so quiet, boy? Pussyah get you tongue or what?” I forced a little smile for his sake. The train stopped in Oshawa where we bought two westbound tickets. In Burlington we took another train and in an hour and a half we were once more in Oshawa. I worried about the number of times we were going to repeat our trip but soon Uncle Boysie began to snore quite loudly. I wondered how many of the nearby travellers were also contemplating if this modern train had suddenly reverted to an old chugging engine.
I believe his sleepy mood remained with him because when we got home and he spotted my father before the television he yawned and asked, “I thought you was back in Mayaro already, boy.” My father smiled sheepishly. I wished they would chat about my father’s time in Mayaro and bring up small lumps of information I had no idea about but Uncle Boysie said, “This travelling does make you real sleepy. I could use the bedroom, Sammy?”
A few minutes later my father asked me, “So allyou meet anybody in particular?”
“No. We was just travelling. Uncle Boysie was thinking about importing the abandoned carriages to use as vendor stalls in Trinidad.”
A couple months earlier he might have mentioned something about “oompa loompa” or “assness” but all he said was, “He have the money. He could afford it.” I tried to gauge from his voice if there was any bitterness or sarcasm but it seemed just a plain statement. I wondered if I was losing the ability to read him.
“Uncle Boysie was telling me about your teeth business in Trinidad.”
“Yeah? What he say?”
“That you couldn’t get the right adhesive so you had to use laglee. The sap from chataigne tree.”
“People don’t eat properly in Mayaro. Eat mostly with their front teeth. Like rodents.” It was a criticism but still the funniest thing he had ever said. In the television MacGyver was slowly mixing some ingredients to blow a hole in a concrete wall. A worried woman was watching a ticking bomb. “Time running out,” my father said, his eyes fixed on the screen. A few minutes later he unrolled the blanket at his side and wrapped himself, tucking the ends around his shoulders. I switched off the lights, spread the foam and fell asleep to the woman’s increasingly hysterical voice.
During the following days I took Uncle Boysie to the Exhibition Place, and the St. Lawrence Market, and the Skydome, and Harbourfront where he sat on a bench facing the lake and ate four hot dogs, one after the other. Each day, though, he got quieter and I didn’t know if it was the temperature, or sadness that his vacation was coming to an end. He inquired over and over about my college and my finances and whether I could manage here all by myself. He even asked if I might be more comfortable in Mayaro. I didn’t want to mention my loneliness of a week earlier so I told him that there were far more opportunities in Canada. He seemed relieved. Later at an art gallery I felt that my occasional sadness really stemmed from a series of disconnected pictures—the Julie mango tree in full bloom, fishermen pulling their seine in the mornings, my mother by the sewing machine watching my approach from school, the Amazing Absorbing Boy hidden in the swamp—that were like panels from different comic books.
In any case I didn’t want to think of Mayaro at this time. Uncle Boysie had done so much for me and I wanted him to enjoy the couple days remaining. Two days before his departure I asked him if there was some place he would like to visit before he left. I even offered a hint. Pussyah. Even though he glanced at me suspiciously, we landed that night at the Pink Pussycat place once more. The dancers came on and did their routines but Uncle Boysie didn’t shout encouragement as before. We left in less than an hour. In the streetcar he told me, “All this excitement not right for a man my age.” From his voice I guessed something specific was on his mind so I waited for some kind of explanation. “This week pass fast, boy. I only have one day again. I leaving on Sunday, you know.” He looked at me and I nodded. “But I will be lying if I tell you that I not worried.”
“You shouldn’t worry about—”
He held up a hand. “Let me finish. You might think this is just a old man talking chupidness but I always consider you like a son.” He took a deep breath and drew his coat more tightly around him. “This place cold no ass, boy. I don’t know how you does manage here. With the coldness and you job and you big time studies. And with you father. You know how he surviving here?” I didn’t know what he was referring to so I shook my head. “He does get a little cheque every month from some kinda workman compensation for a breakdown a couple years aback.”
“What sort of breakdown?”
“Nerves.”
“Nerves?”
“I don’t know how to describe it. I used to hear about a couple people in Trinidad with the same problem. Is like a situation halfway between normal and mad and season up with plenty acting. Remember one of them place we pass on the train? With-me or something.”
“Whitby?”
“Yeah. He was in a hospital there for people with nerves. People who”—he hesitated—“couldn’t cope.”
He got quiet.
“Trap. Trap. Oompa loompa.”
“What you say, Sammy?”
“Nothing uncle.”
We got off from the streetcar and walked towards the apartment. “I tell you father that he have to fix up this sponsorship business before he leave.”
“Leave Regent Park?” I was still thinking of my father at some psychiatric place in Whitby.
“Canada.”
“He leaving?”
“Take it easy, take it easy.” He placed a hand on my shoulder. “You remember that envelope I give him the first night? Well, you know it was the deed to the property in Mayaro. I can’t tell you how it hut me heart to give him that but it was you mother wish. She say that he never return when she was living but he might come back when she dead. The property in both of allyou name.” I felt this conversation between my father and uncle had taken place on the day I saw my father crying. I had seen Uncle Boysie deal with a couple of his workers and I knew how rough he could be. I wondered at the threa
ts he had made to my father.
When we got to the apartment I hoped that my father would be home but Uncle Boysie said, “The lagahoo gone again. God might punish me for this but I hope he have a hard time in Mayaro. Every time he spot you mother sewing machine or she decorations or the flowers she plant all over the place. You does think about she?”
Nearly every day. But I told him, “Not directly.”
I really didn’t want to talk about my mother, not even with Uncle Boysie, who was closer to her than anyone else. In the days after her funeral when I was in Uncle Boysie’s place I had this feeling that she was still in the small house tending her bougainvillea and crotons and hibiscus; I pretended that I was on an extended holiday, no different from the occasional weekends I sometimes spent at my uncle’s place. She had died during my term exams, and on the day of my final subject, chemistry, I passed by the house.
The bougainvillea had grown taller—and briefly I had this picture that they were straining to look for her—and wispy silvery vines had invaded the clump of crotons, but apart from this, the house seemed the same. I had stood at the front entrance for maybe ten minutes, trying to convince myself that my mother was gone and at the same time nourishing the tiny dust of hope that it was all a dream.
I had heard many times that the spirit of dead people never wanted to leave in a hurry and I wondered what I would do if I saw the machine pedalling by itself. One of the windows was partially open and when I went to shut it, a pigeon flapped out from the outside ledge. That window was where I sometimes saw her on my way from school. I looked at the coconut trees and listened to the faint sound of the sea, carried by the breeze in little gasps. It sounded like a distant moaning. I remained there, on her chair, until I saw the shadows loosened and thrown across the trees like a big black bag. I wondered what may have been going through her mind as she sat there, evening after evening. That night, while I was walking to my uncle’s place, I felt that there were these tiny pieces of me that had turned to ice and others that were hot and burning up. Like the Composite Superman, except that my powers were of Iceman and the Human Torch.
The Amazing Absorbing Boy Page 23