As soon as the doors of Pearson Memorial Junior Public School swung open, I knew I was in one fancy establishment. The hallways were empty, meaning everyone was in class, unlike at Rouge Hill, where the lineup to the principal’s office was long and adversarial.
“You need to drop off your child at 8:45 a.m.,” the Rouge Hill secretary would say while scribbling on yellow late slips and handing them to tired working parents. They would rub their tired eyes with stained hands and say nothing.
At Pearson Memorial Junior Public School, Ms Hina’s hand was a familiar sensation walking through these foreign corridors. In one classroom a girl projected a presentation on a screen from an iPad. A flock of animated seagulls flew across the screen to show the words “The End,” in handwritten font. As the girl bowed deeply to her class’s applause, her eyes met mine as we passed by.
From another classroom, children repeated phrases in singsong French. The kindergarten class had the most expensive rain boots lined up outside, and paper bumblebees on the wall above marked the name of each owner. Inside the classroom, the kids worked on a giant mural, and their teacher happily took pictures of them.
“Ms Hina?” I looked up at her slender figure walking beside me.
“Yes, Bing.”
“If I do good today, do I get to come here?” I was hopeful and felt ashamed for being so. Ms Hina stopped in her tracks and knelt down to meet my eye.
“Hey, how you do here can’t be bad. They’re doing something called assessing. It means they are just trying to figure out what kind of school will be best for you. Some kids have special needs. And I think you have a special need, meaning you need more challenging schooling to make it fun. Does that make sense?”
My face was hot. I knew my brown cheeks had turned pink.
“So just answer the questions the best you can. Okay?” I could tell she was nervous too. As much as everyone was telling me about this assessment, I know they knew it meant something better for me. Because no matter how much people called it a special need, it happened to be one that was celebrated.
“Hello, Bernard,” said Mrs Rhodes. She stood up from a long table. A white man in a suit sat opposite her and did not rise. “This is Mr Palmer. He will be here to help me today.”
Mr Palmer smiled faintly, flipped the paper on his clipboard.
“Do you know why you’re here?” said Mrs Rhodes in a way that I knew she was about to answer her own question. “Mrs Hina and Mrs Finnegan both feel that you may be eligible for the gifted program. So today we are going to do some tests, to see if you think in a way that may mean you need another program to help you feel more challenged and excited about school.”
I remember images in a flipbook with thick black wire binding. I remember blocks put before me, which I had to rearrange to match a photo. I remember being asked questions about my perception of the placement of things. Of right and wrong. I remember thinking of my mother’s hand in mine during that drive to Scarborough so long ago.
That night, after my test, my mom held me so hard, kissing my hair with pressed lips. Her Filipino kisses. Ninety-ninth percentile. If I was in a room with ninety-nine other children the same age as me, they would consider me smarter than ninety-nine of them. I was going to the gifted program.
SYLVIE
My daddy told me about when his dog died. On the New Brunswick Atlantic shore, near my grandpa’s trailer. He was walking Hot Dog. It was one of those nasty winters, one that keeps folks wearing their fleeces and longjohns well into the summer, just in case. It was full of blackouts and floods, ice storms and frost quakes. My daddy lost his grip on his troubled beagle in the midst of a snowstorm. Not much visibility past your toes. When recalling the story, Daddy waves his arms to and fro, eyes still squinting at the memory.
You see, Hot Dog was a puppy mill survivor. Probably had six litters before she was rescued. Had teats down to her ankles. Would never leave a crying baby. Would cry at the sight of people sun tanning, thinking they were dead. Was scared of life and of being left behind. Her wailing was horrible. Her leash discipline was even worse.
She came undone that winter night and ran. She loved running after years of being pent up in a kennel, forced to make babies. That night, she was free. That is, until she met the headlights of an oncoming southbound VIA Rail train.
My daddy didn’t know that, though. For a whole week he went to the ocean shores, calling her name. One dusk, at the water’s edge, he saw a deer. A buck, and his antlers were majestic. Magic. He made eye contact with my father, a silent message that would visit my father’s dreams well into adulthood. He knew then, somehow, his dog was never coming back.
Daddy remembers the track worker who retrieved Hot Dog’s remains from the site where her body was thrown. The worker reassured him—a helpless, sobbing child—that death had been quick.
On that Saturday when Bing led me away from the playground and our sunbathing moms to his secret place in Port Union Commons, I knew he was going to leave me. “Here.” Bing held out his hand. I took it. Like my daddy’s buck, he made eye contact with me and made a silent message between our palms. A realization. He led me through a graffiti-filled tunnel to the rocks and lake.
A white pagoda stood at the edge, waves crashing into the shore. Change. Inside the pagoda, a fresh patch of concrete and four orange barriers kept people from the wet surface. “Someone dug a hole here last summer, so they’re repairing it,” Bing told me. Bing crossed the orange barrier and took me with him. He gingerly touched the wet concrete.
“If we write our names, people hundreds of years from now will know we were here.” You know someone is leaving when they start taking pictures with their minds of everything around them. And so we placed our hands in the wet concrete and wrote “Sylvie + Bing BFFs” in cursive as graceful as the concrete goop would allow.
We returned to the playground and pressed the button to turn on the sprinkler.
“You guys have fun by the lake?” my mama asked.
We laughed and screamed at the sensation of frigid water hitting our skin. We ran about, our baby fat jiggling under the hiss and spray. We watched in wonder as rainbows came and went, as clouds made hippo shapes on the concrete. We sat on the sprinkler with our bums and giggled at the sound. We laughed and laughed.
Christy was leaving, too.
“Good riddance,” Mama said to me while sorting laundry. “That girl is on an express train to trouble.”
Christy stood in the common area surrounded by a mish-mash of broken suitcases and liquor boxes full of her meagre belongings. One of them was marked “Sylvie.”
“Hey, treasure hunter. You want any of these? Anything you don’t want, you can just toss.”
I looked inside. A sand dollar. I put it to my ear. “That isn’t a shell you can hear the ocean with,” laughed Christy, before her smoker’s cough interrupted her.
A whistle. A measuring tape. A make-your-own-kite kit. I could tell these were new things she bought from the dollar store or something. My heart swelled and fell. Christy would be back at the shelter one day. Even at my young age, I have seen it so many times. Dads who lose their kids and then find Jesus. Single mamas with dozens of kids who think they have a room at their sister’s house, but then plans change. And now Christy, skinny, slutty Christy, in love and moving in with Roy, pusher of weed and women, lover of drama and tattoos.
“Don’t you want to hear the rest of the story?”
“Okay, Sylvie. But Roy will be here any minute. We’re having a barbecue tonight in his—I mean our—apartment.”
“Where were we?” I reached to pick my nose, as I usually did when I was thinking hard. Christy hooked her finger against mine to discourage it. She hated when I picked my nose.
“All the other animals began dropping objects into the orangutan compound.”
In the window just behind Christy, I could see Roy reversing his beat-up Grand Caravan, ready for the move.
I began the story as fast as I could.<
br />
“Everyone knows that New Year’s Eve is the biggest night at the zoo. All the kids and their parents go there for a fake countdown to midnight, when it’s really just eight at night.”
Christy was suddenly distracted by the sight of Roy. Her eyes danced.
I raised my voice so she could hear me. “So Clementine, along with her siblings, took the zookeepers’ clipboards and tied them together with necklaces that the White Handed Gibbons snatched off of visitors. And they used a jacket and a mop handle for their sail.”
Roy entered the shelter scrolling through text messages with one hand and side hugging Christy with the other. He was a scrawny red-headed man. Nothing like how I imagined him. His denim shirt was unbuttoned low enough to show his pepperoni-like nipples. Christy cradled into the bony edges of him.
I continued as Christy and Roy began to load the van, my voice as loud as possible.
“When the zookeepers and the visitors were counting down to midnight, the orangutans pushed their raft across the pool to the other side. Everyone gave them high-fives through their cages. Some jumped up and down. Some splashed in their aquariums. But the Painted Box Turtles simply waved goodbye.”
“Is that so?” Christy said, tossing a pair of broken heels into the garbage. “And where did they go? After leaving the zoo?”
“They went to Rouge Hill Campground.”
“The one right over here? Near the bridge to Pickering?”
“Exactly,” I said, glad to have her attention for one last moment. “They’re there even now, sharing a two-bedroom trailer. They never made it to the rainforest, but they have lots of trees to climb. And since Scarborough is a sunrise place, they wake up every morning, enjoy tea, and watch the sky turn red.”
Roy gave Christy a nod, then headed outside. He started the engine of the Grand Caravan and it roared Christy into attention.
“I’ve got to go, kiddo.”
I held my box of treasures tightly. “Bye, Christy.” My voice wavered.
Christy took one last look at me. She fingered the make-your-own-kite kit.
“You ever fly a kite before?” I shook my head. I have broken so many, but I didn’t want her to know that. I have the worst luck with them. They always get caught in trees.
“The secret is to let the string go into the wind. You gotta feel with your hands when the moment is right, and let go.”
Christy tousled my hair, believing she would never see me again.
“See you later, alligator.” Then she left.
DAILY REPORT
April 23, 2012
Facilitator: Hina Hassani
Location: Rouge Hill Public School
Attendance:
Parent/Guardian/Caregiver
Children (one per line please)
Marie Beaudoin
Sylvie Beaudoin Johnny Beaudoin
Edna Espiritu
Bernard Espiritu
Helen McKay
Finnegan Everson Liam Williams
Fern Donahue
Paulo Sanchez Kyle Keegan
Natalia Angelo
Marca Angelo
Pamela Roy
Evan Roy Yanna Roy Tasha Roy
Notes:
Today was a lovely day. We were able to open the exterior door to the courtyard to let the air in and the kids out. I set up the water table outside so that the kids could splash about. Some of the caregivers even stripped them down to diapers, to avoid wet clothes. It was so funny.
Thank you, Evalyn, for sending me the news about the amalgamation of the literacy centres with the Provincial Play Centres. This isn’t the first time I have been part of a program that comes and goes, but it doesn’t make it any less of a heartbreak. Governments enter and exit, but we frontline workers are the ones who get lost in the shuffle. Actually, that’s not true. It’s our communities we work so hard for that get lost in the shuffle. I’m so glad you will be staying on to coordinate the programs, as I have had such a positive experience under your stewardship.
Anyway ... I want to express my interest in staying in this community if our program gets restructured. I understand there may be some shuffling between us at Rouge Hill Public School and those at East Side Early Play down the road. I don’t want to see all the bridge-building I’ve done go to waste. Every day, I am inspired by these people’s resiliency. Every day, I am honoured to know them all.
EDNA
I have long days.
The day started with a ten o’clock appointment with the cop. He always comes in on his days off. The first time I saw him was in uniform, about a year ago, when there was a shoplifter at Tarek’s convenience store next door. I saw him through the window while I was sweeping toenails off the tiles, and he nodded his head at me. All the ladies at the rub and tug, Ivana and them, manage to stay out of his way each time he strolls along our strip mall. I think they have an understanding. I’m pretty sure he’s a customer, and he enters their premises from the back.
“Good morning, Officer Tyndall,” I said when he came in today, out of uniform. He nodded. He enjoys seeing me feel afraid of him. I had decided a long time ago to never really look him in the eye. Instead, my eyes were on the footbaths I was filling with bleach and warm water to start the day.
“You ready for me?” His face winced at the smell of bleach. This made me happy. He had scheduled a waxing appointment. This was different from his usual manicure, when, as I do with any client, I unbutton his shirt cuff to reveal his entire forearm. With my right hand, I pump lotion onto my fingers. Inevitably, the pump is only half full of dollar store-grade lotion. Inevitably, the lotion splatters across my thighs. Inevitably, Officer Tyndall says, “Ooooh, is this getting personal, Edna?” I do not respond. I begin massaging the sinew along his forearms, toward the bend of his elbows, and keep my eyes down to avoid seeing the creases of his lips upturned. Smirking at me. My thumbs make their way to his palms, making circles along his lifeline. His smirk grows bigger. “If you can do this with my hands ... who knows what you can do elsewhere,” he says. I do not respond. I never respond. And still, he always says it.
Today, he had asked for a back wax and headed to the facial rooms. I closed the door behind me. “My girlfriend likes me smooth all over, you know?” He started to remove his striped golf shirt, revealing a turtleneck of hair from the bottoms of his earlobes to above the crack of his bum. I shuddered.
I had not even finished rolling out the paper on the surface of the waxing bed, and he had flopped his body facedown, like a child waiting for his bedtime story and for me to tuck him in. I snapped my latex gloves into place. I checked the consistency of the wax by dipping a tongue depressor in and out of the pot. Like caramel. Hot caramel. I shook baby powder across his torso to make it look like Christmas. Then I began to apply the hot wax along the direction of hair growth. He moaned since I refused to cool the liquid down one bit. If he were a different client, I would have blown on the wax before applying it. But I was enjoying his pain too much. Once he was covered from nape to crack, I began my torture. I chose the largest patches of linen strips I could find to begin the pulling process. From the small of his back I pressed the linen into the wax and pulled the hair from the root, like an ugly carpet in an ugly house that I wanted to demolish.
“Aaaaah! Ooooh!” He began screaming with every pull. And with every pull I thought of the times his knees made their way between my legs under the manicure table. “AAAAAH! YOWCH!” I thought of the times he leaned into me, to smell my ear. “SHIT! GOD, THAT HURTS!” I thought of all the times he handed me my one dollar tip and winked at me. “JESUS! PLEASE! IT HURTS! STOP!” I did not. I did not stop until he was as hairless as a newborn mouse. I turned him over and did it all over again on his chest. I noticed his eyes tearing up.
In the most singsong, docile voice, I said, “Oh, Officer Tyndall, are you crying?”
He buried his face into his elbow. “No.”
Eleven o’clock was Mrs Zoe. She is one of my favourites. Just like a
ll days, she came in with new hair. I told her I loved it. She thanked me. She sat down and placed her cellphone on the table in front of her while I filled her acrylics. Her look is the stiletto pointed, Thursday nail manicure, which means detailing on the ring finger. Today she chose fake crystals, with a chocolate base on her other digits. She does not know my name but knows I will be paired with her when she comes in. She likes my attention to detail. As per usual, we sat in complete silence while she scrolled through her Facebook page, and I lovingly placed crystals on her Thursday finger. I love the quiet, and she does, too. The other girls had clients who were filling the air with conversation. But Mrs Zoe, even as I massaged the black skin on the back of her hands, closed her eyes, enjoying the silence.
Two o’clock. An older lady with glasses and a fancy bag hanging from her arm came in, wanting a pedicure. “I don’t want a varnish today. I want someone who is good at massage.” I asked her if she at least wanted a topcoat, to make her toenails shiny. “No, really, I just want the nails cleaned and trimmed. The focus should be the massage.”
After completing her pedicure, I dried her feet with my towel and positioned her soles facing me. Once I started the massage, the old lady began moaning in delight. She moaned and moaned like this was the first time she had ever been touched. Like she was seeing God. I looked up at her and saw that her glasses were askew. The touch was so pleasurable for her, and everyone in the spa could hear; I was surprised she didn’t begin undressing.
“I will see you next week,” said the old lady while fanning herself. She gave me a sly wink. I gulped.
By five o’clock, the girls and I had done about four pedicures each. The floor was littered and crunchy with nails and skin. Mae knew I wanted to finish work early, but I wasn’t able to shake my last client, Mrs Fitz, who insisted I do her feet. I hated her and used our sessions to meditate on what I had done in my life to deserve such torture.
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