Scarborough

by Catherine Hernandez

  “After my mother was taken away, I couldn’t stop thinking of the water. I grew old, sitting in the corners, pulling out the fur along my shoulders, dreaming of swimming. For years, I ate from my perch. I slept while people took pictures of me. I sat and watched the sun travel across the ceiling from east to west.”

  Christy sank down on the leather sofa. An exhale.

  “When I began poking holes in my own cheeks, the Painted Box Turtles stopped me.

  “‘Patience!’ they all said together from their wading pool next to my lookout. Their old eyes looked over the surface of their aquarium toward me, through me, in me, as they formed a choir.

  “‘What is it you dream of?’ they finally asked, their beady eyes still while their legs treaded water.

  “What the long hairs have seen. Where they come from. Where I belong.

  “The choir of turtles turned inwards toward each other and whispered old whispers. Then they swam away. I beat my chest. I swung from perch to perch. But they were finished.”

  “‘Patience,’ they said, their heads rotating like a line of synchronized swimmers. ‘Patience.’”

  Christy exhaled and patted me on the back. She was done for now.

  “I gotta get some ciggies,” she explained.

  Somewhere between getting ciggies and the budding of the trees, Christy lost interest in the story of Clementine. She let her shaven hair grow in. She began to dog-ear self-help books and quoted from them often.

  “When you make a list of all the things you want in the universe, you just say thank you. Not, I want this, I want that.” She scribbled on Hello Kitty paper she found in the shelter’s arts and crafts room. Using Crayola marker, she wrote the words “Thank you for the king-size bed. Thank you for the window facing the lake.

  “You’re, like, aligning yourself, you know? Aligning yourself with the energy of these desires. If you say I want this, I want that, the universe will only reflect back to you that you’re a person who wants things. Not has things.”

  She knocked on our door, asking Mama for some medicine to smudge. She told Mama she wanted the Creator to guide her, or something.

  “For God’s sake. Will that bitch leave me alone already? I don’t care if she says she’s a quarter Blackfoot. I’m not giving her any more of my damn sage. She can get her own.”

  I noticed she owned a new cellphone, which she used to text with her new boyfriend, who bought her the phone. The case of it was a bedazzled star, which Christy picked at between messages.

  “Roy made it so I can text him as much as I want,” she explained to me once.

  While her body grew skinnier, her voice became louder. Between fleeting moments in the common area, I found her in the dark corners of the shelter, texting longingly into her phone, wiping away tears. The next day, she was sunny all over again, showing me the new dress Roy had bought her.

  I wanted to tell Christy how the White Handed Gibbons, who were naturally bipedal as well as being excellent climbers and throwers, were instrumental in giving Clementine and the other orangutans pieces of the puzzle. I wanted to tell her how the Painted Box Turtles instructed the White Breasted Water Hens to steal a list of carefully chosen objects. I wanted to tell her that the zoo began to post warnings to their workers of theft after road maps, necklaces, jackets, pens, knives, and clipboards went missing. But Christy wasn’t interested anymore. She was too busy waiting for Roy to text her back after last night’s fight.

  BING

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Hakim. He was like a wild horse to me. Untamed, he hit girls at random and laughed in the face of guilt, preferring to be sent to the office than to apologize. He had no fear crossing the street without holding an adult’s hand. And now, he was kissing all the girls on the playground. He lacked modesty in language and body and was unknowing of the bible, something that I with my Christian sensibility was surprised to adore. His kissing frenzy was the talk of the schoolyard and was fuelling my new fantasies.

  “He’s so gross!” said Clara, that Twinkie kid, the only girl in school who managed to have a hand-me-down free wardrobe. She was fancy, rich, and white. Of course, Hakim would want to kiss her.

  What a liar! I thought to myself but would never say out loud. I know she likes it. She should be so lucky. I often imagined the texture of his chapped lips against mine. What it would be like to linger at the bottom of the slide, just the two of us, a puppy pile of budding love. Sharing lunches. Trading carrot sticks for dried mango. Passing notes to each other in class. Dinner tonight? Yes? No? Maybe?

  Right beside Rouge Hill Public School is a community centre and hockey arena. Every day after school, families with lighter skin and two whole parents with two whole jobs drive to the ice rink for hockey lessons. Out of the minivans, their back windows illustrated with those family stickers: the largest stick figure, a father; the medium-sized one in a skirt, the mother; and so on to show everyone their three healthy children, their cat, their dog, emerge these perfect families, hockey gear and all, their ice skates clinking as they rush inside.

  We, the brown kids with one and one-half parents, with siblings from different dads we see only in photos; we who call our grandmothers Mom; we who touch our father’s hands through Plexiglas; we wait for their fanfare to be over. We wait through the weekends of extracurricular activity for Mondays, when the Zamboni resurfaces the rink and leaves a pile of chemical-ridden “snow” outside.

  This mountain-high remnant of the nuclear family was what we delighted in, mid-winter, climbing to the top in our second-hand sneakers and sliding down on garbage bags. This shadow of the outlines we would never live up to is what we took in handfuls, to throw at each other in fits of laughter and joy.

  On one particular Monday, a freezing rainstorm transformed the pile into an icy castle. It took a whopping ten minutes just to ascend the massive thing, what with no grip on our shoes, and only seconds to descend into the chain-link fence. I decided to burrow holes instead, deep into the depths of the snow mountain. I used my gloves, too short to protect my red frostbitten wrists, to dig caverns big enough to fit my chubby body.

  It was meditative, creating a space in which I could hear myself breathe. Above me, I could hear the hooligans sliding on the surface as I continued my earnest work below. I turned to find Hakim on his knees, doing the same thing; his burrow had connected with mine.

  In this space, we could hear only our breathing, the fabric of our snow pants silent. He looked directly at me. My heart began to pound so hard I could feel it in my earlobes.

  He looked up at the low ceiling of snow above our heads. “Did you know that if there are enough people tobogganing above us, this cave will collapse?” We looked at each other. “They won’t even hear us scream. They’ll just keep tobogganing until sunset. And by then, we’ll already be frozen to death.” The fog of my breath mixed with his fog. I gulped.

  Hakim, still on his knees, crept forward. His wet mittens grabbed hold of my hood, and he kissed me. His cheeks were cold. His nose was snotty. But it was like a movie kiss, with his head turning side to side, his tongue twisting here and there. I was motionless, burning inside, not wanting it to end. Then he pulled away from me suddenly and returned to digging.

  I was too busy hearing music in my head to wonder at the hardness under my snow pants. I almost died in the arms of the boy I love, I thought to myself. We almost died doing what was dangerous, forbidden. I didn’t need to be a saint any longer. I was a secret-keeper from now on.

  CORY

  “You ready, kiddo?”

  With his elbows resting heavily on the kitchen table, Cory unfolded the orange-coloured paper and read the instructions out loud.

  “Hello parents! It’s that time again. On December 12, we will be celebrating winter with our annual Carnaval, in the style of our neighbouring province of Quebec. The entire day will be filled with snow-castle building and ice sculptures, and each student will be given a small taste of maple syrup taffy. The students in M
rs Landau’s class will be pitching in this year, with their newly learned French vocabulary. Each child is asked to present a sign on which they’ve illustrated their assigned French term or word associated with Quebec’s Carnaval.”

  The memo ended with a scribble in Sharpie at the bottom of the page. Laura Mitkowski: Bonhomme de neige.

  “Bonhom. Duh. Neg. What the hell is that?”

  “It means,” Laura used her fingers to follow the words, pretending to read, “sss-no-mmm-aaa-nnn.”

  “Snowman? Is that so? Okay, so let’s take inventory, missy.” Cory scooped up Laura and placed her in the wicker kitchen chair.

  “Cotton balls.”

  “Check.” Laura squished the bag of fluff in her hands.

  “White glue.”

  “Check.”

  “What’s this red string for?”

  “He wears this red belt thingy.”

  Cory spread out the Bristol board that Mrs Landau had enclosed with the supplies.

  “Why don’t you get started on the cotton balls first?” Cory tore open the bag and emptied it onto the table. “You know how to make a snowman, dontcha?” Laura nodded.

  While she got to work, Cory pressed play on the CD player sitting beside the stove. The band English Beat blasted from the speakers. He nodded his head as if obeying to the rhythm. Laura giggled as Cory danced to the cupboard and got a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli. She nodded to the beat too as Cory shimmied to the bottom oven drawer to retrieve a saucepan. Laura giggled some more. “Come on, Laura Loo! Get your head into it! Make your mean face!”

  The lyrics came so easily to Cory. He had heard them so many times. In borrowed cars, heading to darkened bridges. In Peter’s house, celebrating Cory’s first time rolling some Black boy for his shoes. While getting his tattoo, the boys laughing at his tears. While watching Peter be escorted into the back of a cop’s car, Peter smirking the entire time.

  Dancing in a circle, Cory’s eyes fell on Laura’s figure-eight snowman shape of cotton balls, but with no glue to adhere it to the board.

  He scoffed, “What are you doing? You need to put glue on it first, you retard.”

  Laura’s face blushed.

  He paused at the heat rising in his throat.

  “Go on,” he patted Laura’s head jokingly. “Put the glue on first.” He grabbed the glue bottle and the lid of a long-lost plastic container. He squeezed the bottle, upside down. The nozzle was not open. Gripping it tightly, he tried to twist it counter-clockwise. Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey. It did not budge. He took the lid off the bottle instead and turned the bottle upside down. Glue poured out, covering the container lid with much too much glue. He threw the bottle across the room into the sink. Laura flinched. Catching himself, he patted her on the head again. Laura flinched.

  He went back to the saucepan to stir the ravioli.

  “This is fun, isn’t it? You’re gonna have the best sign in the class.” Pasta stuck to the surface of the pan. He turned down the temperature and took a deep breath.

  The CD started skipping. He slammed the stop button, and the CD door flew open. He slammed the CD door down. Again. Again. It finally closed. He took a deep breath.

  He turned back to Laura to see her silently scooping up handfuls of glue overflowing the container lid. She looked at Cory, her face red. Her hands were frantic, doing the impossible task of picking up liquid with her fingers.

  “Stop! Stop! Fucking stop! What the hell are you doing?” Cory grabbed a kitchen towel and began wiping up the mess. “You’re making a goddamn snowman, not building the CN tower. Stupid bitch.” On his hands and knees, he looked up at Laura. She was holding her knees together and peeing. Glue on her hands. Pee down her legs. She whimpered.

  “What the fuck, Laura?! Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you?” He grabbed her chin and held it, tight enough until it felt good to hurt her. “Look at this mess, look! What is fucking wrong with—What’s that smell?” He whipped around. The ravioli was burning. With a deep belly yell, he threw the pot at the wall near Laura’s head. Blackened tomato sauce splattered the top of Laura’s hair. Laura froze.

  “See what you did? See what you made me do?!” The room was suddenly quiet.

  He began to pace the room like a lion in a cage. “I don’t know, man. I don’t know. Sometimes ... sometimes ...” He used his fingers to twist his lips, trying to find the words. Laura couldn’t hear anything. All the switches on her body had suddenly turned off. Her arms were numb, and her throat clenched. Cory continued to pace. “You’re good, right? You’re okay? You’re okay, right?” He began to whimper like a puppy Laura once saw on television. “I don’t know, man. I mean …” He paused and looked pleadingly at Laura. He knelt before her, but her gaze was somewhere far away.

  “You know, your mom ... A lot of people thought they knew her when they didn’t. They didn’t know the Jessica I knew. You know why they put her in a foster home, sweetie?” Cory blinked away fat tears onto his red cheeks; he wiped snot across the gin blossoms on his nose. “Because her grandma, who was supposed to be taking care of her, left her. She told me all of this. Because I was there to listen. She told me everything. She told me she was just a kid, like you, and that old lady tried her hardest to lose her. And on that subway platform, she did just that. The old lady walked fast enough through the crowd that your mom was lost forever. I thought I found her, but I didn’t. I thought I found you, but ...” Cory sobbed uncontrollably. Like he was choking. “Now I don’t know. I’m just as bad as that old lady, aren’t I, Laura. Laura Loo?” Laura was as still as a doll. Her eyes were glassy. Cory, still on his knees, wrapped his arms around her, hoping to feel her hug him back. She remained limp.

  “Hit me. Come on, Laura Loo! Hit me!” He took her passive hands and hit his own face. Laura remained limp. Crying, he crawled toward his jacket, got up, and made for the door.

  LAURA

  It was after Daddy had stormed out, after what little twilight was left in the sky transformed from lavender to darkness, that Laura came out of her stupor. All the switches on her body came back on. She swallowed hard. She blinked even harder, realizing she hadn’t in a while. She felt a soreness on her chin. She remembered but didn’t remember. The room came into focus. Slowly. The fog dissipated, and the details of the apartment became clearer. Where she was situated within the room became clearer. This is my body. This is tomato sauce in my hair. These are my legs. I am sitting on the carpet. I am wet. It is dark outside. I am alone, again.

  She removed crust from her eyes. Wiped away guck from the sides of her mouth. Opened and closed her fists. Her tailbone was sore, so she got up and looked at the wet spot underneath her bum. She stared at it for a while. A problem she couldn’t solve. She took off her leggings and panties and used them to sop up the moisture. After a few good presses, she felt the carpet with her hand. Good enough. She looked at the stained clothes, wondering where to put them now. She stared at them for a while. A problem she couldn’t solve.

  As silent as a mouse and still pantless, Laura went to the window of the now dark room to watch the snow fall. It fell as silently as she had travelled across the carpet to the window. That silent window. A street lamp marked the forty-five-degree angle of the falling snow. Down below, Laura saw a woman standing outside the back of the massage parlour smoking a cigarette.

  They caught each other’s eyes. Both blonde. Both cold. One inside, one outside. One young, the other younger. They waved.

  When Laura was living with her mother in a low-rise apartment complex near Kennedy and Eglinton, her two major jobs were to reach for things and to guard the door.

  Jessica was out of the house for prolonged periods of time. Sun rising and setting. Rising and setting. All silence. In this silence, Laura made tasks for herself, like drooling into a puddle at the edge of the carpet to see how much drool it would take to make an ocean. Sometimes she played swimming in the bathtub, where she peed to make the water yellow. Sometimes she watched mould grow along
loaves of old bread, waiting for it to turn into a forest.

  She did not know how to read. So when pieces of paper were slipped underneath the door, she did not know that they were notices from the landlord. She took a pair of shears from the kitchen and began to cut these yellow notices into the shape of a mother duck. The shavings became a nest. Laura imagined it was her duck farm and placed the mama duck on the window ledge to watch it grow and feed on anything Laura could find, be it cotton swabs or hairpins.

  “Mama Duck said ‘quack, quack, quack, quack,’ but none of her five little ducklings came back ...” Laura sang while cutting five eggs out of more yellow notices slipped under the door. She placed them in the shredded paper nest under their two-dimensional mama.

  The sun rose and set. Rose and set.

  “Five little ducks went out one day, over the hills and far away ...”

  Laura happily skipped to the nest, ready for the ducklings to hatch. She used the shears to cut the paper eggs open. Only, there weren’t any ducklings inside. Thankfully, at that moment a pink piece of paper slid under the door with big angry letters on it. She cut out five pink ducklings, gave them faces with her mother’s ballpoint pen. She placed them underneath their paper mama for warmth. They needed to rest.

  The sound of an ambulance drew her to the window, delighted. It meant that a crowd of people were gathering, and perhaps one would wave to her, up on the second floor. They didn’t. They were too busy shaking their heads over the bloody body of L, the man who rolled his money in rubber bands and had lots of visitors.

  At night, when the rest of the tenants were watching talk shows, Laura took her mother’s razor blade and shaved her entire body. She shaved her vulva, which she witnessed her mother do while smoking a cigarette, before leaving on her extended outings. Laura shaved one of her eyebrows and stopped when she clipped her skin.

  One day there was a knock at the door. She pulled the step stool over and looked through the peephole. It was Mrs Kamal. Her bejewelled hijab was a wonderful mystery to Laura, but her mother never let her say hello.