The Boat People

by Sharon Bala

  And you saw no issue with resorting to criminal means to sneak into this country? Singh said.

  Prasad thought for a moment, then said: I am reading a book right now about a very famous railroad under the ground. I believe there is a long history in this country of…irregular arrivals.

  The stenographer coughed to cover a snicker. Priya and Gigovaz glanced at each other, both of them folding in their lips. Even Hurst seemed to be forcing the corners of his mouth down. Model migrant, Priya thought. If only they were all so fortunate.

  Deed

  Kumi said the house had been altered. They’ve raised it one storey, see?

  Is anything familiar? Grace asked.

  They stood shivering on the sidewalk, appraising a modest house on the corner of a residential street. An original craftsman in trendy Strathcona, the real estate listing boasted. Tremendous curb appeal in Vancouver’s oldest neighbourhood. Priced at $1.2 million.

  There used to be a swing. Kumi pointed to the gnarly old walnut tree with the twisted trunk. We weren’t allowed to stand on it, but I did anyway and one day I fell and sprained my ankle.

  A family exited the house, and through the open door Grace saw the front hall and a young man in a suit and tie, waving goodbye. Kumi had the listing rolled tight in her fist.

  You’re sure you want to do this? Grace asked. She was nervous about the deed in her mother’s purse, ticking like a time bomb.

  Let’s go, Kumi said, head high.

  Inside, there was rich wood panelling that must have been original, and granite kitchen counters that most certainly were not. There was an artificial scent in the air, aggressively floral and vaguely noxious. Kumi went straight for the living room, leaving Grace to deal with the real estate agent.

  Multi-generational homes are popular these days, he said. There’s an in-law suite in the basement.

  Oh, Grace said.

  You could turn it into a rental, the agent said quickly. It has its own entrance.

  Okay, thanks. Grace had her eyes fixed over his shoulder as her mother disappeared around a corner. She took a step to the left and the agent mirrored her movement. When she moved right, he did the same. Excuse me, she said. I just have to…

  The door behind her opened with a gust of cold air and the agent’s eyes lit up. Grace scurried away.

  In the dining room, Kumi stood, turning her woollen Olympic toque round and round in her hands. A young couple inspected the fireplace, one man kneeling with his head up the chimney while the other stood back to appraise the mantle. They matched in skinny jeans and ironic moustaches.

  This used to be the kitchen, Kumi said. What have they done? Grace took her mother’s arm and as they stood close together, Kumi squeezed her eyes shut and said: We had a black-and-white floor, in a checkerboard pattern. And there was a table here in the middle where I did my homework.

  One of the young men glanced over, curious.

  Mom, Grace whispered.

  Kumi’s voice rose with her certainty. My uncle built shelves, she said, gesturing to a wall. Floor to ceiling here. For our dry goods.

  You lived here? the young man asked.

  All the wainscotting is original, the real estate agent announced, leading a new arrival in.

  Grace took the opportunity to steer her mother out and they walked down the hallway, Skinny Jeans close on their heels.

  This isn’t right, Kumi muttered.

  It made Grace melancholy to watch her mother wandering from room to room, touching the tiled bathroom walls, the chair rail in the hallway, and finding nothing familiar, a nosy stranger trailing behind, feigning interest in the cabinetry, the plumbing under the sink.

  On the drive over, Kumi had railed, indignant: It was practically the ghetto! No respectable white person would be caught dead where we lived. My father breaking his back in a labour camp, the rest of us sent to Slocan with only what we could carry, everything else auctioned for pennies. Thieves! That’s our home. I should be leaving it to you.

  But the house defeated her. A stranger in it, Kumi was too cowed by the unfamiliar rooms to fling the deed in the real estate agent’s face.

  What is that? she asked, pausing on the stairs and sniffing the air. Why does it smell like that?

  A woman inspecting the banister gawked and Grace hustled her mother upstairs. In the smallest bedroom, Kumi put her hand on the window that faced the back garden.

  Was this your room? Grace asked, taking in the pink princess bed with its teddy bear placed just so, the doll house in the corner, all of it professionally staged.

  At a certain point, they made everyone register, Kumi said. You had to keep your papers on you at all times. I remember the day my parents went. They came home with black marks on their fingers.

  The woman who had been behind them on the stairs started to walk in. Grace blurted: This room is occupied! The woman left muttering weirdo under her breath.

  Kumi rubbed her right index finger with the opposite thumb, hard, as if trying to clean it. It took a week for the ink to fade, she said. Until the day she died, my mother kept her registration card in her wallet. Hers and my father’s.

  I didn’t know that, Grace said.

  Kumi shuffled to the bed and dropped down heavily. Grace looked at her mother, an old woman now, clutching a teddy bear under a canopy of tulle. What was this room like when Kumi was a girl? Grace thought of her own, ordinary childhood and how different her mother’s had been. How instantaneously one’s trajectory could pivot.

  Excuse me. Skinny Jeans hovered in the doorway. I’m sorry. I couldn’t help overhearing. Kumi gave him an encouraging smile and he joined her on the bed. You lived here, he said. Before the war?

  How long had he been eavesdropping? Grace watched, horrified, as her mother opened her purse and brought out the deed. The paper was yellowed and delicate with age, creased deeply at the folds, the legalities spelled out in archaic cursive, all flourishes and swirls.

  The young man treated it like the Magna Carta, unfolding it slowly and smoothing it out on his lap with care.

  You lost your home during the internment. He reached out and touched Kumi’s shoulder. His gaze was reverent and Kumi lapped it up.

  The last days we spent here are the clearest in my memory, Kumi said. This disease…I can’t tell you what I did yesterday, but I know exactly what I was wearing the day we boarded that train.

  Mom, Grace said from the window. You’re tired. We should go.

  And my parents, Kumi continued. How calm they were, how carefully they controlled their emotions. Everything was quietly done – packing the suitcases, gathering all the things we had to turn over to the officials. My brother tried to hide a radio and my mother slapped him. Do what you are told, she said.

  Was everyone so…so compliant? he asked.

  Our community leaders urged co-operation. If there’s one thing we Japanese do well, it’s following the rules.

  The stranger marvelled at the deed, read out loud passages of its legal language. Kumi squeezed his hand and Grace was appalled at the naked gratitude on her face. Later, he’d tell his partner: You won’t believe what I just heard. They’d put in an offer and the story would be a staple at their dinner parties. This house has a history. I met the woman who…Obaachan would be mortified, her private shame reduced to an anecdote.

  It’s an outrage what they did, he said.

  Kumi had been tugging on the teddy bear’s fur. She gazed at the young man, confused. Her lower lip trembled as she searched out Grace. What is this place? she whispered.

  We have to go, Grace said, crossing the room decisively. My mother is not well.

  Skinny Jeans looked abashed and Grace was glad.

  Kumi revived in the car and asked Grace to take her to Powell Street. On the drive, she reminisced about growing up downtown, in the tight-knit community they called Little Tokyo.

  Everyone knew each other, Kumi said. As long as it wasn’t dark, we children could go anywhere we liked. She po
inted to a delicatessen and said: That used to be a fish market.

  Really?

  When Grace was a child and would ask her mother, What was it like when you were growing up? Kumi always said the same thing: There was never enough money. We just had to make do.

  Same for every immigrant, her grandmother Aiko would add. Hard work. Sacrifice for next generation. Nothing special about us.

  Now, for the first time, Kumi was letting down her guard, telling another story.

  We used to go to the fish market, me and my brothers, with our mother on Saturday mornings. It was my job to make sure the boys didn’t get lost. Those little tricksters, the places they would hide!

  They parked the car and walked, Grace with a protective arm around her mother’s back. It was a cloudy day, threatening to drizzle, and people strolled all around them, collars turned up, complaining into cellphones about the cost of real estate. It’s these Asians. They buy up everything. Who can compete?

  Kumi stopped in front of a café and tapped her foot on the patch of sidewalk where they stood. We used to play hopscotch here, she said. Mr. Yanamoto was the greengrocer. He had big glass jars behind the counter, full of lollipops and Life Savers and sugar babies, and if we behaved ourselves, someone would buy us a treat.

  Grace imagined a buzz of Japanese voices, little boys in short pants on their bicycles, girls skipping rope in Mary Janes, women sticking their heads out of windows, calling them in to dinner. The tram rattling by.

  She saw police descending with their ugly posters, demanding business owners put them up. The notices would darken the windows, throwing shadows into every store and barbershop, her grandparents’ laundromat. Then the curfews and raids, cameras and cars confiscated. What had it been like after the expulsion, when Little Tokyo was a ghost town, still and silent, a half-torn poster fluttering in the breeze.

  It was disconcerting to think of her headstrong mother caught in the turmoil. A small, wounded child in a pinafore. A city girl bewildered by the long train ride deep into British Columbia’s rural interior, the terrifying mountains looming overhead.

  Kumi paused and blinked at the stairs that led to the café’s door. She lifted a foot and held it in mid-air, clutching blindly, searching for Grace’s arm. Low blood sugar, Grace thought. Another symptom.

  Inside, the café had patterned cement tiles and dark wood shelving. Grace scoped out a round bistro table in the far corner with a view to the door. Recently, she had taken to sitting with her back to the wall in public places.

  She brought Kumi a hot chocolate and a Danish. They’re out of sugar babies, she joked.

  The deed was on the table and Kumi fingered its edges. How different everything might have been, she said.

  Mom, you need to eat, Grace said, and nudged the plate.

  Kumi brought the Danish to her mouth and nibbled obediently, so Grace obliged her by pretending to examine the deed. She told herself it meant very little. Even if the war hadn’t happened, the house would have passed out of the family’s hands long ago, sold after her mother and uncles married and left home. Morose thoughts of Little Tokyo had made her despondent. It was a familiar in her life now, this niggle of despair that crept up from nowhere and threw a wet blanket over everything. Hormones, she’d decided, watching the twins bicker one day. They’ve returned.

  My parents’ generation, the Issei, they were so naive, Kumi said. That is the most galling thing. They thought if they made a show of good faith, the government would come to its senses. Such blind trust in democracy. Kumi ripped off a long strip of pastry and folded it into her mouth.

  They did their best, Grace said, putting a hand over hers. They were trying to protect you.

  Protect themselves, Kumi said. Save face. And see what…!

  The MedicAlert bracelet dangled off her wrist as she lifted a napkin to cover her eyes. Grace turned her head slightly and waited, watching the door. A bulky man walked in, shoulders hunched, eyes concealed by a hood, hands hidden in his pockets. Fear hitched Grace’s chest. The man raised his head and waved as a child ran over. When he pulled back his hood and sank to his knees, holding his arms out, his whole demeanour changed. Grace released a breath.

  An unwanted memory intruded: a detention release Grace had denied. The migrant had a young son and his lawyer had played up the separation. The boy is living with strangers who don’t speak his language.

  Grace knew she had made the right call. There had been a bus bombing and the migrant was involved. She couldn’t roll the dice on public safety, not when documents belonging to people who had died overseas inexplicably ended up on a boat here. No doubt, Mitchell and his jurisprudence would disagree with her decision. But what Mitchell didn’t consider was that the process might be flawed. Let him be hamstrung by precedent. Grace would use common sense.

  Twelve Montreal teenagers had conspired to bomb Parliament. At Heathrow, Coke cans jerry-rigged to explode were found on a flight bound for Canada. Every day, there was another terrorist threat in the news. Sometimes, pushing a grocery cart or standing in line at the ATM, Grace watched the people around her, blithely going about their business, and wondered how they could be so guileless, how a year ago she had been just the same.

  Her mother cleared her throat and when Grace turned back, Kumi was sipping her hot chocolate, eyes dry.

  Grace rotated the handle of her mug one way then the other. I didn’t realize you were so angry.

  Kumi sighed. Your father and I, we thought, at a certain point, the bitterness must end. You’re Canadian. We did not want you to hate this country.

  And the girls? What about them?

  We were wrong, Kumi said. All through school, who were your friends, the man you married? You are Canadian in a way your father and I could never be.

  Her mother was right, Grace thought. The twins could take a nuanced view, balancing the wrongs of the past against the good fortune of their present. Had this been her concern all along – that they’d turn against their country?

  I regret it. By repeating our parents’ mistakes, we did you a disservice. Kumi threaded and unthreaded her fingers, tugging her wedding ring on and off. How could it happen? she said. The internment? Certain people felt too rooted, too comfortable. They took it for granted that they deserved to be here more than us. Entitlement closed their hearts.

  Grace saw where this was headed. Mom, please let’s not start this again.

  At one time, didn’t they say terrible things about the Irish? They were dirty, they were poor, they had diseases. Energy revived, Kumi was on a roll. But after a while, the Irish came to be accepted. And then people who forgot the stones thrown at their grandparents threw those same stones at others.

  We’ve been over this, Grace said, crumpling her napkin and reaching for her coat.

  Just…just listen. Let me finish. I know you think I’m trying to tell you how to do your job.

  And you aren’t? Grace wound her scarf around her neck. It always came down to the same thing with her mother: critique. Nothing she did would ever be right.

  That child who called you a FOB. Why did he do this? Kumi drew a line between their two sides of the table. Because he forgot.

  Okay, okay, Grace said, holding out Kumi’s gloves. Let’s go home.

  Kumi was irascible as they left. Don’t treat me like a child, she snapped when Grace tried to help her into her coat.

  Outside, it had begun to drizzle and the stairs were slick.

  Get off me, get off me, Kumi said, waving Grace away.

  The railing, Grace said.

  I’m not decrepit yet, Kumi grumbled under her breath. Then she lifted her foot and missed a step. Crumpling like a marionette, she came down hard on one knee before pitching forward, headfirst, down the concrete stairs.

  MOM! Grace screamed.

  On the pavement, Kumi lay curled in a ball, one leg bent at a terrifying angle, perfectly still.

  Come clean

  Balasingham Rangasamy, Singh said. Tiger na
me: Sammy. For ten years, between 1999 and 2009, this man smuggled weapons for the LTTE.

  Even before Nigel Blacker could translate, Ranga sat up with a start. Priya’s heart sank.

  This man is not a low-level cadre, Singh said. He is a trained operative and a high-ranking member of the Sea Tigers, the LTTE’S naval branch.

  Priya was confused. How could Singh know all of these very specific things, and why had she not –

  Gigovaz scowled at Priya and turned her microphone to face him. Excuse me, he said, but is there some evidence to support these accusations?

  Singh slid a booklet across the desk toward Gigovaz. These documents only came to our attention an hour ago.

  The booklet was two inches thick, the printed pages square-hole punched and bound with wire coils. There was a clear PVC cover and, underneath, a title page that read Exhibit L. At the front of the room, Mitchell Hurst already had a copy. An hour ago, and you had time for binding and a cover page? Priya wondered.

  I did notify your office, Singh told Gigovaz, raising her brows at Priya.

  Priya started to say: I –

  Singh cut her off. The bottom line is, this man lied about his identity. On February 5, 2009, he captained a Sea Tiger vessel that attacked a Sri Lankan Army ship. The details are outlined in Exhibit L-10.

  It’s not an Exhibit if you haven’t entered it into evidence, Priya fumed in her head. Border Services was at it again, withholding evidence until the last possible moment in order to catch them off guard. Back at the office, there probably was a message on Priya’s machine. This is Amy Singh. Just wanted to let you know…How long had Singh watched the clock and waited, timing her call so the phone rang after she was sure Priya and Gigovaz had left?

  Singh said: After a brief confrontation at sea, during which the migrant sustained a leg injury, the militants were captured. Five days later, he and two others escaped. This man is a wanted criminal in his native country. The Sri Lankan government has a warrant out for his arrest. Exhibit L-13.