Bone and Bread

by Saleema Nawaz

  “Well,” I said, when it was clear no endorsement was forthcoming. The room felt quiet, and I got to my feet. “Should I put on another CD?” I went to the stereo, which was on the counter near the kitchen, conscious of the puzzled stares of a dozen eyes. I chose another album and pressed Play.

  “Beena’s pretty busy,” said Sadhana behind me. “She has a kid, you know. My nephew, Quinn.”

  After a chorus of interest and probably feigned surprise, given the stack of kid’s toys in the corner, I returned to the living room and the question.

  “Actually,” I said, reclaiming my spot, “I’m moving to Ottawa with my son just as soon as the school year is over.” It was almost a physical jolt to say it out loud, as though my whole body were vibrating.

  “Really?” said Cherise. “Why’s that?”

  “More jobs.” I dared a glance at Sadhana, who was looking at me now, her eyes cold. “Plus, you all probably know by now, if you’re such good friends —”

  They were all looking at me with expectation.

  “For a long time, Sadhana’s been sick . . .” I paused and heard a choked sound from my sister, and I waited another beat, long enough to make her panic. “Of me,” I said. “Totally sick of me.” I flipped my expression into a grin, to turn it into a joke, and Sadhana was forced to laugh. Her friends were watching us tentatively, and the room felt tight. All knitting had stopped.

  “Not true,” said Sadhana, recovering herself. She got up and gave me a peck on the cheek before pouring herself more tea. “I’ll miss you. And Quinn. It’ll be the end of an era.”

  We got through the night. After everyone went home, my sister went to bed without speaking to me. The next morning, she went out early and stayed away all day, while I reorganized all my papers and Quinn’s books and clothes. I made lunch, played eighteen games of Yahtzee with Quinn, cleaned up the kitchen, cooked supper, and worried about how Sadhana was coping with my decision.

  Late in the evening, Sadhana returned and agreed it was for the best. She was flushed and sweaty and looked like she had come from the gym. “It’s not easy to have a love life with a little kid sleeping in the next room, you know,” she said. She was talking about herself, her new freedom. Relieved, I didn’t rise to the bait, as I knew she would miss having him as an excuse — the little boy warm with sleep whom she always kissed with delight when she came in after another bad date. “Never another psych major,” she would say. “Remind me, sweetheart.” And Quinn would sigh as he slept, wriggle up further on his pillow.

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Plus,” I said, “I’m twenty-five and I’ve never lived alone.”

  “You don’t need to keep convincing me. I get it. It’s time.”

  Quinn was asleep as we spoke, passed out on my bed after finishing his hot chocolate. Sadhana and I sat across from each other at the kitchen table, swirling our cups, exchanging small wondering looks over the world we were opening up.

  It was raining the day Quinn and I left Montreal. I set the alarm for an early start so we wouldn’t drag out our goodbyes. I had taken Quinn over to Uncle’s for their farewell the night before, and Uncle had made it plain he was unhappy with my decision.

  “Independence is not the same thing as neglecting your responsibilities,” he said, while Quinn was tearing open his new Lego set. “You said nothing before about moving to another city.”

  “Sadhana is a grown woman,” I said. “And she’s doing fine right now. Plus we’re going to do a lot of visiting.”

  Uncle had muttered about modern families and eroding values, but he insisted we take two dozen bagels away with us. Quinn threw his arms around him before we left, and when I saw Uncle’s big hand patting his shoulder, I tried to repress the jealous satisfaction I felt in separating them. Uncle had long ago forfeited his right to be involved in our lives. The chill of his coldness to Sadhana and I had not yet worn off, and I had unworthy moments when I thought he should not partake in our only consolation.

  “Time to split, huh? Hit the road?” Sadhana was being brassy because that’s how we had become around topics that upset us. We had already wept ourselves brittle. It was easier to try something else.

  “Pretty much.” We hugged. Sadhana kissed Quinn before helping us down to the cab stand with all our bags. She kept waving as we pulled away, though I knew it was for Quinn rather than me. She looked slight, as always, but also not as tall as I remembered as she fell out of view behind us.

  Quinn was sniffling as we waited in line for the Greyhound. I wanted to be the redheaded girl who was sitting on her own suitcase, reading a book, with a pillow under her arm. Then the line was moving, and she stood and picked up her suitcase just as Quinn yanked his hand away from mine and sat down on the floor.

  “I’m not leaving,” he said. He was eight years old. “You can’t make me.”

  It always made me feel bad to see a kid hazarding autonomy against all odds. I struggled to pull him up by the elbow, my hands slipping against the slick of his blue raincoat. A giant muffler with his name on it, a farewell gift made by the women in Sadhana’s knitting circle, was knotted around his neck and making him sweat. After I got him to his feet, a man with a military haircut helped carry our bags as I frogmarched my son onto the bus.

  Quinn’s nose was running down onto his lips so he could taste his own sorrow, and as I tugged down his zipper and held him, stiff and unwilling in my arms, I wanted to tell him that emotion was like a carnival ride: its heights and depths might stagger and astound, but after the first time, he would know he could walk away when it was over, legs shaking but still alive. But it was a non-transferable kind of truth, in both conveyance and meaning. I couldn’t bring myself to say it. And not everyone, I supposed, was able to walk away.

  I wondered what he was so sad to leave behind. His teachers, his friends, the shape of our apartment, the sloped floor that made tiny cars speed up before the roadblock of the door frame. I thought I would miss fresh bagels, speaking French, the heat and bullet speed of the Metro. I ended up missing cheap lattes, the Greek man who worked at the post office, a giant electric cross on my horizon.

  I did not tell Quinn, This isn’t what it’s like to feel bereaved.

  Ottawa, the closest major city to Montreal, was really the capital of another nation. A smaller capital of a larger nation. Queen Victoria’s choice, Canada’s diminutive ruling city. It was going to be my solace and escape, that sleepy place holding the country in check. Getting away from Sadhana, it seemed like the only option — close enough to visit, far enough for separate lives. Everything in Ottawa was going to be what we made it, not what had been given to us. I hoped it would be a place for Quinn to spread out and dig in. It seemed like the kind of place where it would be possible to believe that what we wanted could make a difference.

  We already had ties to Ottawa — little, mythical ones. The city had been Mama’s second stop in Canada on her great trip of destiny from California to Quebec. After she went north to B.C. with her draft dodger, she’d gone to Ottawa for six months, then to Montreal at last in 1970. Mama’s sojourn in Ottawa had always been a source of speculation for Sadhana and me, as she rarely mentioned it. When we asked her what she’d been doing there, her answer was, “Gathering my strength.” Which seemed favourable enough to recommend it in any case.

  When we first arrived, the place seemed huge: smaller in an obvious way than Montreal, but large in its newness to us, its unexplored streets and unknown citizens, a place where every inch of ground wasn’t choked with recollection. After a pine-scented month in a furnished apartment, we bought a little one-and-a-half-storey bungalow near LeBreton Flats. I signed Quinn up for school and started handing out résumés. I dragged us to yard sales and to the Salvation Army to pick up furniture, though nothing I could say or do would persuade Quinn to become excited about our new life. He to
ok the move badly, hurling up a stony wall of silent protest for several weeks, making it clear both that he was unhappy with me and that he’d picked up our tactics of passive aggression. He was a nightmare until school started and he made a friend and scaled back his offensive. He missed Sadhana, but I let him dial her number every night and pretended not to listen while they talked.

  A week after we left, my sister decided to stop speaking to me on the grounds that I’d abandoned her. For my part, I pretended to be too occupied with cleaning up after dinner, or folding laundry hauled back from the laundromat, or other carefully timed household tasks that required both hands and prevented me from coming back to the phone. I hoped to hide our fight from Quinn until it blew over. But one night he hung up the phone and refused to go to bed, accusation all over his face.

  “Auntie S said she never, ever wanted us to leave, and you tricked her into letting us move away.”

  There was no point in calling her a liar, since whatever Sadhana said became the truth anyway. The truth for all intents and purposes. She believed it, Quinn believed it, and sooner or later so would I.

  The next few days pass unremarkably, if uneasily. Evan calls to tell me his room is painted green and that I ought to come see it. Instead, I spend too much time visiting the website of Mouvement Québec.

  On Thursday, Quinn and I return to Montreal. His classes are over, and his exams are spread out over the next two weeks. In my pocket, I have directions from Libby, but I am spared any need to divulge my destination once Quinn shrugs me off at the bus station.

  “Give me some lunch money,” he says, holding out his hand. “Please? I’m going to go to the library to study for my physics exam.”

  Out of habit, I try to stare him down, but my teenaged son merely blinks over his contacts until I place a ten-dollar bill on his palm. and his hand snaps shut like a trap. “À bientôt, Maman,” says Quinn. “See you at Uncle’s.” Shouldering his knapsack, he runs down the stairs to the Metro without a backward glance.

  The temporary campaign headquarters for Ravi Patel is the other address I have brought along, and the office is tucked into a little row of stores between an antique shop and a taekwondo school, just two steps away from the church sheltering the Essaid family. A few minutes early to meet Libby, I promise myself one look, and I cross the street to take full advantage. A barber’s pole, rusted at the cap, is still mounted outside as a relic of the site’s last incarnation, but the office proclaims its new allegiance with six large identical campaign signs mounted in the windows. Ravi Patel, poster boy. I freeze with the sudden fear that Quinn will have seen them, but I remind myself that where I’m standing is two neighbourhoods north and a little east of the bagel shop.

  A bell jangles as I open the door. Inside, there are five workstations with people making calls and a black folding table supporting a large coffee machine and an open box of doughnuts. Everywhere there are pamphlets and information brochures, some emblazoned with Ravi’s face, others sporting the party logo and photos of the leader, a blond man with enough brilliance to his teeth and hair to make him at least as qualified for modelling as he is for political debate.

  “Can I help you?” The woman who addresses me seems guarded, as if she can tell just by looking at me that I’m not going to be interested in supporting the campaign.

  “Maybe. I hope so.” I scan the room for a door behind which Ravi could be concealed. I have no way of knowing if Sadhana ever sent him the note I found on her computer. She often composed drafts of emails using word processing software before going out to find a café with an internet connection. But thinking of the two of them meeting behind my back makes my mouth dry up. I clear my throat. “Is the candidate here?”

  “Oh no. He’s usually making the rounds. He’s so committed to the neighbourhood.” The woman smiles at me as she starts getting up from behind the table. “I think he might actually meet every single voter before election day. Do you know much about Mr. Patel’s vision?”

  I grab for a pamphlet. “Just wanted one of these,” I say, realizing I’m not interested in hearing the spiel. I don’t think I could stand to hear Ravi described as an upstanding citizen. “Thanks a lot.” I stalk out.

  The very sidewalk is a comfort when I get outside. The trees. Anything without red and blue logos and Ravi’s grinning photo. A little park across the street sets off the church from the drone of traffic. Libby is waiting for me on a bench, carrying a large shopping bag.

  “The church keeps them fed,” she says, after kissing me hello. She hauls the bag up over her shoulder, and I hear the dull roll and clank of cans. “But they can always use help.”

  “I should have thought of that.”

  “I do because Sadie did,” says Libby, shrugging. “She was always cooking for them and bringing them food.” She notices the pamphlet in my hand. “Wanted a souvenir?” she asks.

  Ravi’s face is creased hard under my thumb. I toss it in the nearest trash can. “Something like that.”

  The church boasts verdigris spires in limited heights — its size meant to accommodate a goodly sized parish and elevate their spirits to a modest degree. Once, when these roads were still dirt, it might have held all who could hear the peal of its bell. Now the faithful tread to its doors on a shell of concrete, the second great crust of the earth.

  Libby leads the way inside, between newly polished marble pillars flanking graceful steps sloped through wear towards the centre. A plaque on the duller outside wall dates the church’s consecration to 1858. Inside, approaching footsteps echo in the nave as our eyes adjust from the summer light. A figure like a moving shadow approaches us, but once he is close at hand, I take in a vital older man dressed in black clerical clothes. His Roman collar is the same white as his hair. It looks like silk.

  “Father Cavanagh,” says Libby. Her voice is loud in the still church. “This is Beena, Sadie’s sister.”

  “Hello,” I say, as he clasps my hand first, and then hers.

  “It is grace that has brought you here,” he says, “just as it brought me to them.”

  Leading us past a row of empty confessionals, he ushers us down a set of worn stone steps to an unfinished basement with stone floors.

  “Through here,” he says, taking us down a hallway. At the end of the hall, a narrow corridor leads west.

  “That takes you over to the rectory,” he says, “where I live.” Turning right, we appear to enter another, more recent era of construction. A closed door is set into a newly framed wall that sets off part of the church’s immense underbelly.

  “Well,” he says, turning the knob. He pauses for a moment while his eyes search mine, but he seems to find something in them he can accept as a guarantee. “Go ahead. I’ll give you some privacy. We can talk later.” His fingers run up and down the ecclesiastical edges of his dowdy black shirtfront. “I like to stay upstairs. Keep an eye on who’s coming and going.”

  I step back to let Libby take the lead, then follow her into a long, narrow room with couches on one side and a tiny kitchenette near the entrance. The middle of the room is taken up with chairs and large meeting tables. “We’re here,” she calls out. “I brought her.” Libby drops the bag of food on a counter near a little sink.

  A tall, dark-skinned woman unfolds herself from a wooden chair in the corner, carrying a baby on her hip. Clad in a plain white T-shirt and well-fitted blue jeans, she has tightly curled hair pulled back from her forehead. A cloud of it puffs out behind her headband, in a black corona that dips and bobs as she kisses Libby in greeting, before turning to me. “So you are Beena, Sadhana’s sister,” she says, holding out her hand. “I’m Marwo. This is Léo. I am happy to meet you.”

  “Me too.” Her palm is cool to the touch. Baby Léo has his mouth hanging open, his little lips glistening wet. His eyes focus on me with moderate interest as he grips his mother’s T-shirt. “It’s a nice space,” I say,
though almost at once I wish I hadn’t.

  “I am glad you think so,” says Marwo. “We are grateful to be here.”

  She offers us tea, and when we accept, she moves to the corner near the sink and takes up a large thermos sitting next to a hotplate.

  “Cool tea,” she says. “No real stove. We have adapted.” She pours a little into a cup for me to taste, and it is sweet and milky. It reminds me of Mama’s spiced tea except that I can taste pepper.

  “It is okay?” asks Marwo. “You like the taste?”

  “It’s very good. Thank you.”

  Libby pulls out some chairs for us and we all sit down at the table. I can feel Marwo studying my face.

  As I sip the tea, my gaze drifts to the edges of the room. I notice two bedrolls with sleeping bags and a metal rack draped with drying clothes in opposite corners before I check myself and turn back to my host, who is watching me look.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Please look. It’s fine.” Her response secures my consent for her own careful observation of me.

  “I understand you knew my sister.”

  Marwo puts her cup down on the table, out of reach of the baby stirring on her lap.

  “She was a good friend to us. We were very sorry not to go to the service.” She gestures to the spare walls of the modest room. “The safety Father has given does not protect us outside of here.”

  “Your husband could be arrested,” I say. “Is that it?”

  “And deported.” She makes a sound with her mouth like the call of a bird, and a man enters from an adjoining room, through a door concealed behind a curtain. Marwo introduces him as her husband.

  “Hello to you all.” Bassam joins us at the table, taking Léo from Marwo and holding him on his lap. He has a fine profile, with a smooth head and a prominent, straight nose.

  “Welcome to our country,” he says to me. He has a soft voice, and I remember reading on Sadhana’s computer that he was a conscientious objector before he fled Algeria. “For us, this is Canada,” he says, kissing his son. “This room. This is Quebec.” He looks up to meet my gaze. “It is smaller than yours, maybe.”