Later that night, I headed outside to have a cigarette. The air was crisp and clean and quiet. Nice change from the shelter. A lone car slowly drove past, leaving tracks behind it. I could tell by its fishtailing that the driver couldn’t afford winter tires. I whispered a prayer to myself that there would be no accidents tonight.
“Faggot!” I squinted through the dark down Kingston Road toward the yelling. It was two men near that Everyting Taste Good Caribbean restaurant. One guy slipped on the ice while the other guy got in a car and drove off in a hurry. Now I realized the man was stumbling toward the shelter. Toward me.
As the crunch of snow got closer, I retreated into the shadows of our entrance. Judging by that eagle patch he had on his jacket, I knew to avoid men like him. He had an unlit cigarette in his mouth. I put my cigarette out immediately. I didn’t want him asking me for a light. I hoped he hadn’t seen me. He was drunk, for sure. Even though the air was still, he wavered like a flame in the wind.
Suddenly the entrance door flew open, and my head snapped to the side. Christy. As per usual, she was engrossed in her boyfriend drama. When she saw me, she ended her phone call and gave me a weak wave.
“Hi, Michelle. Can I ask you something?” Christy didn’t wait for me to answer. “Is the Number 86 bus running tonight? I just need to head out, you know?” She checked her phone for new texts.
I have seen so many like Christy come and go here at the shelter. They come when they’re young. They come when they’ve been touched by their fathers, their cousins, their brothers. They come when their social worker has a binder full of notes under their arm. They come with their plastic bags and dollar store purses over their bony shoulders. They come with dreams, big and small, wanting to be my next success story. They come wanting love, and so they hug me long before night falls, because in another world it would have been their mother kissing them goodnight and not their uncle kissing them on the couch. They come. They come when they are old. They come with babies sucking their soft and saggy breasts. They come with children, all looking like their different daddies, licking lollipops and wearing old Halloween costumes.
Just yesterday, I watched a woman collapse on the tile of the front foyer. She watched as her kids were taken away by her auntie, who happened to be the only sober one in the immediate family. I watch people choose lovers and drugs over kids all the time.
As I was about to answer Christy and let her know the 86 bus was out of commission until nine o’clock tomorrow morning, she jolted from the vibration of another text coming in. It was him. Finally. She waved again at me and headed back inside.
When am I going to see Christy again? I wondered to myself.
I looked back in the direction of the drunk white man, but he was gone.
CINDY
Eunice was such a pro that night. All I had to do was put the Christmas wrapper from the kids’ presents down on the ground, and she knew what she needed to do. I saw it in her face. Like, her tear ducts get all weepy. Her teats get all full, ready for her pups. I could see it from the dinner table, where I was sitting. I knew we were going to have Christmas puppies. She has had about five litters with me. All of those puppies sold like hotcakes. But puppies born on Christmas? What a score.
So, anyway. I gathered all the wrapping paper from the kids’ presents and made a manger just like Jesus had. Except I was the only one there for the Nativity. No wise men. No kings. No bloody Mary and Joseph. Just me, Cindy Brown, in my Walmart holiday pyjamas. In the kitchen. It was a hoot.
I knew I might be there a while, considering how old Eunice is. So I double-layered cushions and put three kitchen chairs together to lie down on in case I got sleepy.
Before I sat my ass down, I slid the lace curtains of my kitchen window to the side to see if anyone in our community housing cul-de-sac was making the move to do Christmas fireworks like last year. There was no one but that Black boy, Victor, walking to his house. I could see him looking back behind him, like he was suspicious of someone following him. Wouldn’t put it past him to do something stupid on Christmas. I don’t expect much of him, after his arrest. I heard he was vandalizing with his paints. What a shame. Victor waved at me, and my face got hot. Quickly, I slid the curtain closed.
“Mom?” Travis came in, looking all sleepy. I fingered his haircut. God almighty. I must’ve given him the worst haircut on the surface of this planet. I was being stupid, watching HGTV while cutting my kid’s hair. I couldn’t help it. I love watching home improvement shows. You know how you can’t watch naked body porn in the presence of your kids. But you can watch house porn, get all turned on by the prospect of crown moulding and double vanities while you eat dinner with your ungrateful family. Only problem is, it makes me the worst hairdresser. Not like I need any help with that.
“Are they here yet?” Travis had seen so many puppies being born. Before Eunice, it was Wendy, a Shih Tzu. They were named after my mother’s ugly sisters.
I still have pictures of Travis and Gabby dressing up Wendy’s puppies in baby clothes, standing on carpet covered in dog turds. It was sad as hell when Wendy started barfing uncontrollably, morning and night. I had to shell out cash just to have the vet look at her. He said, all judgmental-like, “How many litters has she had?” As if he couldn’t tell I was in the business of selling puppies. I know it was him who called the cops on us. I could smell his suspicion. By the time they busted open my garage door and found Wendy in her cage, fooling them with her pretend shakes—she always did that to get pity from anyone she met, what a drama queen!—we had done one of those midnight move-outs to avoid the damage fees from our landlord. I knew that asshole would be coming at us, wondering about the pile of dog shit on the balcony. I was doing her a favour anyway, what with all the barking and such. I still miss Wendy, though.
“Not yet, mister.” Travis sat on my lap and put his head into my neck. Of all my four kids, it took the longest to get him off the boob. Lord, what a little perv.
I could tell by the way his breath smelled that he hadn’t brushed his teeth like I’d told him to. This is what happens when you send him to school with a bunch of Caribbean people. Like, they have no manners, you know? One friend of mine who is ashamed of his Guyanese roots told me that when he was growing up, his family would have a sink full of dirty dishes and would clean them only when they needed them. Thankfully, he married some Chinese woman who wouldn’t take that crap. I mean, who grows up like that? People don’t get what it’s like to be one of only a few white kids in a bad school.
Back when I was attending grade school at St. Malachy, we were a small trashy lot. It was a cash-poor school, like, I am talking only one snare drum and one recorder in the school band kind of poor. Most of us were the grandchildren of senior citizens who turned their cottages into their retirement homes. All of us smoking cigarettes at the back of the school, while our teachers thought we were in the gym for Easter mass. One day when we were punching holes in the bottoms of beer cans and sucking them dry, I saw a bus roll into the school driveway. It was full of people from El Salvador. All of them were refugees from the war down there. Suddenly our school was majority brown and majority English as a Second Language bullshit. Scarborough was never the same after that bus rolled in. Next came the Sri Lankans and all the other Pakis. The Chinese were sneaky; they were trickling in all along. Those Filipinos just kept having babies. Now I can’t walk into Scarborough Town Centre without the lot of them taking up all the space in the food court, smelling like curry.
Travis smelled sour, which wasn’t much better.
“I said to brush your teeth.” He groaned like he always does. Like he was surprised he had to brush his teeth, yet again.
“But I wanna see the puppies being born.”
“Okay, fine. Go brush your teeth for two whole minutes, and you can come watch and wait. I’ll set the timer on the stove. Now go.”
I couldn’t blame him. It was exciting.
I remember when we all visited Riverdale Fa
rm downtown. We took two trains and a streetcar to get there. I was in charge of two refugees from El Salvador. Both girls were dressed like Michael Jackson, trying to be hip, but with clothes from the Goodwill. It was so hard not to laugh. We were led to a barn door. Inside was this sow lying on her side, in so much pain. Poor thing looked right up at me. I could see her piglets all wiggling about in her belly. It was so crowded in that belly, I could see their snouts and tails. The skin was so taut. I approached her with caution, wondering if she would bite me. I rubbed her head. She closed her eyes. I could see it felt good.
I did the same to Eunice that night. I do the same to any dog about to give birth. I rubbed her head. She closed her eyes because it felt good. There was something about these puppies that was different, you know? Like something in my tummy told me things were going to change.
WINSUM
All you gotta do is take off your apron, put on a nice dress, and sit at the table in front of the counter instead of behind it. And ta-dah! All of a sudden, you’re at a restaurant that doesn’t belong to you. No explaining to white people how spicy this is or how spicy that is. No checking the expiry date on bottles of Ting or wiping down the tops of Chubby pop drinks. No dealing with malfunctioning freezers. The only task I had was to wipe away enough frost on the restaurant window so the “closed” sign could be seen, loud and proud for the holidays.
For Christmas Eve, I had sent Melvin into the kitchen to do as I said. To let me put my feet up a bit. Christmas Eve was for me and my family. I had hired Melvin to help out at my restaurant after my sister begged me. Little Caesars had fired him for making “culinary choices” to people’s pizzas without their consent. Because he fancies himself a chef extraordinaire, he thought it was a good idea to add random toppings like sundried tomatoes and capers to a basic cheese pizza order.
While my foolish nephew took over the kitchen, me and my new wig were up front and centre, thank you very much. I had given Melvin strict instructions to simply plate my usual turkey, macaroni pie, some pastelles, and chow chow for dinner. But even with that, he was banging away in the kitchen. I shook my head.
Lorna sat across from me, chatting away. Clive sat beside his wife, reading the latest issue of Sharenews.
“There is something so very precious about Switzerland, you know?”
“No, I do not.” I admired my fresh tips that I got at the nail salon down the road.
“Winsum, it is a magical, glorious place. Our Airbnb was in Valais. Right, Clive?”
Clive nodded silently and turned the page of the newspaper.
“Or was it La Sage? Well, it doesn’t matter. The point is, we were surrounded by the Swiss Alps. It was like we were in a movie.”
Lord, have mercy on my sad soul, but truly I hate listening to her brag. I know Christ has my back and understands the hours I have spent as a single mom working my behind off for my restaurant and putting my son Joffrey through nursing school. Listening to this woman go off about skiing here and there has earned me a cent or two in the heaven bank!
“You don’t say.”
“Absolutely. We had a chalet at the bottom of the hill so that Melvin could snowboard right down to us and then eat lunch.”
Clive kept reading.
“Doesn’t it seem silly?” I asked Lorna. “Sliding down a hill of snow and paying money for it. Wouldn’t you rather visit our cousins in Port of Spain?”
“It’s not all about sand and sun, Winsum. You travel for culture. The Europeans have culture. Did you know the Swiss can speak German, French, and Italian?”
“So what of it? Our family speaks Spanish and English. On top of that, Mom spoke Cantonese.”
“It’s not the same.” She rolled her eyes and changed the subject. “It’s too bad Joffrey couldn’t make it.”
“Well, you know my son.” I made sure to put emphasis on mine, as opposed to her sad specimen of a child. “I wish Joffrey could make his way down to Toronto, but he’s too busy working at Channaman’s Island Restaurant, in Montreal, while he’s finishing school. My boy is a good apple.”
“It’s so funny, you know? When you told me he was studying to be a nurse, I thought you were joking. I didn’t even know boys could be nurses.”
I wanted to rip the cheap wig off her head.
“Dinner is served!”
Melvin plunked down a square plate in front of me. Where the hell did he get square plates? Did he steal them from the Keg? On these stupid square plates sat a palmful of delicately handcrafted fanciness stuffed into square pasta shells and drizzled with the most pretentious zigzag of pepper sauce. Curried chickpeas dotted the edges of each plate like rabbit turds.
“Trinidadian Doubles ... but ravioli!” His arm flourished in a rainbow arc a wee bit too close to my new wig.
“What in God’s name—”
“Trinidadian Doubles—” his arm flourished again, but I stopped it mid-arc, to get it away from my beautiful wig.
“No, I heard you. What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?”
“It’s Doubles ... but in a ravioli instead of in a bara.”
I crossed my arms and stood to meet his clueless gaze.
“What next? You gonna make Jamaican coco bread croissants?!”
I could see in his face that the wheels were turning over a good idea. I stomped my foot down as hard as the tiles could take.
Knowing full well the idiocy of his own son but not possessing the balls to do anything about it, Clive folded his paper in half, placed it under his arm, and began shuffling out. I always knew him to be soft, a bit cowardly. If I dug really deep into that yellow heart of his, I know he would have a few words to say about his sorry excuse of a wife and son. Instead, he silently put his brown leather jacket on. He neatly tucked his striped scarf into the edges of his collar to guard against the cold and our bickering.
“Look. Now my Clive is all vexed. He’s leaving. See what you’re doing? It’s Christmas Eve, and you’re here barking orders left, right, and centre.”
“You listen here. This is my restaurant. I told you, no silly business up in my kitchen. We were going to have a simple family dinner of turkey, chow chow, macaroni pie, and pastelles. That’s all.”
Clive spirited away, out of the restaurant. A grandfather heron flying into the darkness of a marsh. We were more like turkeys, my sister being longer in the neck and with much less sense than feathers.
“Winsum, this is what you serve every day at Everyting Taste Good. Maybe Melvin just wanted to spice things up or something.”
“Lorna, this is tradition. Tell me something now. What was the name of Mom’s restaurant right beside Warden Station?”
“Everyting Taste Good.”
“And how many years was Everyting Taste Good the number one place to get the best Doubles in Scarborough?”
“Fifteen years,” Lorna looked down at her hands, “until Mom died.”
“That’s right. And every Christmas, we would go close down the shop and have the restaurant to ourselves. Every Christmas. Until Mom died. That’s why I opened this joint. To continue her traditions. And now, Everyting Taste Good has been here for eight years and is the number-one island restaurant in Scarborough.”
I turned to Melvin once again.
“People here want home. They want home because it is so darn cold outside, and all they want is their mom or dad or kids back where it’s warm. And green. They want it how it is back home. Looks ugly and tastes pretty. Simple. Served with a big spoon on a big plate. No fuss. No thinking about texture and height and taste journey or whatever. They just want home. Today is Christmas dinner. I want home. None of this foolishness. Now, go back to the kitchen and serve me home. Now.”
Melvin turned on his heels and slowly walked back to the kitchen. His ball cap rim snapped back in my direction to make one last, insulting plea.
“But, Auntie—”
“Don’t ‘but Auntie’ me. Go in there and learn the beauty of big spoons and big plates.”<
br />
CLIVE
When the door shut behind me, I was greeted by the quiet of a winter night. Silent night. Fit for a king. Fit for Baby Jesus.
I checked my watch. Five thirty. I had been in there for only an hour. It felt like an eternity. I had very little time. I would be expected to return before Winsum served her Black Cake for dessert. Perhaps by then their battle would have died down to a peaceful stalemate, I reasoned.
I smelled the booze before I heard his voice.
“Hey.” I turned to see a filthy white man pointing weakly at the restaurant’s frosted windows.
“Good evening.”
“This is the place with the free chicken, right?”
“Excuse me?”
“We got the free chicken. Last time. We had so much free chicken.”
Maybe he was referring to when Winsum’s refrigerator broke down. “Oh, right. There’s no free chicken tonight. It’s closed.”
“It’s not closed.” He staggered toward the window and with his red cold hands tried to wipe the frost off to look inside. “I can see people in there.”
I blocked him gently with my arm, not wanting a fight or a scene. “Yes, but they’re eating alone in there. It’s not open to the public right now, sir.”
“Listen, can you ask them if there’s free chicken like last time?” He used his fingers to twist his lips, searching for the words so hard that he almost ripped them off. His voice cracked as he looked at his soaking wet sneakers. “Listen, man. I forgot. I woke up and forgot the stores would be closed. And my daughter ... she’s up there in my apartment, and now we have no dinner. I forgot it was … I just forgot. I slept too long.”
“This place is open, though.” I pointed to Mr Park’s convenience store right next door.
“I just came from there. The chink thought I was stealing.” His sobs were so absurd, I wasn’t sure if he was crying or laughing. I was too embarrassed to look him in the eye.
“I can hear everyone else down the hall having parties and laughing. And she’s hungry ... I don’t know if I can do this, man.”
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