Went on that way for a page. Rap, reeling: his mother as a young woman, maybe only twenty, before he was even born. His father at the University of Khartoum. Already a professor?
Second page: “‘I worry . . . that while you’re away . . . visiting your family in Somalia . . . you’ll tell them about me . . . like I kept daring you to . . . and they’ll disown you . . . or keep you from me, the infidel, forever . . . . ’”
Hardly even heard the rest of the page.
Why didn’t she ever tell me any of this?
Pages turning, crackling, dragging him back.
“‘I always loved it when you . . . sent me letters . . . and put a candy inside . . . and wrote, ‘Kiss the envelope before you open it.’ And when I ate the candy, I thought of you . . . and of kissing you. And . . . missing you. I will love you forever . . . I can’t wait . . . until we are married. Your . . . husband to be . . . Jini.’”
JC grinned at him. “Damn, boy, your pops was smooth like Usher on Penzoil!”
Rap laughed—
Front door thunked opened, body-checking his heart and brain.
Became a tornado, grabbing the letters and the stacks of comics and sliding them into his bed-box and replacing the box-spring cover and the blankets and then tucking art pads behind the books on the built-in wall-shelf above his bed—
“Dude, what’s the deal? Zat your moms?”
Lying on the floor, Static Shock: Rebirth of the Cool—
Shoved it between mattress and box-spring, hauling JC into the living room—
Stopped dead.
His back burning, stomach and colon and nutsack twisting at the sight.
Wished they’d stayed in his room or sneaked out the basement window and headed to the 7-11 or the courtyard or anywhere but right there, where his mother was leaning against the wall with Dr. Liberia pushing up against her.
6.
Her eyes blaring horror at the sight of the boys, she shoved herself and the good doctor off the wall.
Dr. Liberia glanced over-shoulder, pretending he was straightening a picture with one hand and not fooling anyone that he was straightening something else.
Turned back around, adjusted his wire-frames, patted the greying kinks in his thinning hair.
His mother throat-cleared. “Raphael, you’re home!” She straightened her hair and blouse, failing at faking innocence. “And you, you haff a, a friendt here?” Saying it like, “When did you grow all those extra arms?”
Rap, the only sound he was emitting: teeth grinding so loudly it sounded like he was chewing ice. JC’s eyes went wide in his peripheral. He could practically hear him saying, “Dude . . . . ”
Then JC waved and said, “My name’s JC, ma’am.”
Rap, thinking, Did he just say ma’am?
“Hi, boys,” said the doctor.
Rap’s mother flustered on.
“We, we didn’t, I didn’t expeccit you home. Either of you! Well, I jussit met you, so of corrus I didn’t expeccit you! Nice to meet you. JC. How, how do you know Raphael?”
“We were in the same English class, plus we both go to—”
Rap: “—to the same mall right across the street from school.”
JC geared into reverse, floored it.
Rap’s mum: “So . . . what do you two have plannedt?”
Rap: “Hang out for the rest of the day. Right here. Too hot to go anywhere. Basement’s nice an cool.”
“Yeah,” said JC. “Juss chill, kick it.”
“Both chilling and kicking?” said the doctor. “Sounds demanding.”
Rap calculated the comment’s contempt at a 4 on the 10-scale. He’d heard way worse from the old freak. Still felt it like a steel-toe kick in the tail bone.
“Don’t you boys,” said the man behind the wire-rims, “feel like seeing a movie or something?”
Rap, ice-crunching. JC looked at him.
“Uh, if you’re short,” said the doctor, reaching for his back pocket, “I could cover you.”
Rap’s mum cleared her throat again. The doctor’s eyes rolled ceiling-ward for less than a second, but Rap caught it.
“Or, y’know . . . just,” he said, pulling a ten out of his wallet. “It’s on me is what I’m saying.”
“It’s twelve bucks just for one,” said Rap. If there wasn’t any more ice between his teeth, it was all in his voice.
“Raphael . . . . ”
“When I first came to Canada, movies were only five dollars for adults,” said the professor, emitting a twenty. “Here. Get yourself some popcorn. Or drinks. Or whatever.”
When Rap didn’t budge, JC took the five and the twenty from the wire-rims. “Thanks!”
Rap glared at JC and the Liberian professor, and then the two youth backed out. Like two ants escaping the anteater who’d just smashed inside their hill, leaving their queen to die.
Shoved their shoes on, down the hall, and then the man’s yell muffled by the door: “You’re welcome, Raphael!”
“Dude!”
JC, puffing and struggling to keep up, while Rap biked top-speed through leaf-shadows and sunlight on the side-road of 117th Avenue.
“You, you never told me your moms was like a total—”
Over-shoulder, Rap laid both eyes on him like the hands of UFC champion.
JC slowed down, gave himself an extra couple of metres between the two of them, apparently understanding that if the word “MILF” passed his lips, Rap’d sidekick him right off his bike.
“—a total, y’know, beautiful, like . . . fox or whatever. Respect, bruh!”
Rap sped up, banking south down to 116th avenue. JC stood on his pedals by the time he caught up, panting.
“—like Iman! I swear—even sounds like her, same kinda throaty voice—”
“Would you drop it?” Rap didn’t need anybody telling him this shit. He’d heard it a million times before. Sometimes he even saw it himself.
“Sorry! So, what movie you wanna see? Hear Black Panther 3’s great—”
“We’re not seeing any movies! And gimme that money!”
They pulled over. JC handed over the green Queen, but told Rap to wait for the blue Laurier. He whipped out a pen, scribbling a black bowl-cut and pointy ears on the dead prime minister.
He jiggled the bill at the corners. “‘Fascinating, Captain! Two to beam up!’”
Rap laughed before he could stop himself. JC had powers.
“So, what’s your mom’s boyfriend’s name, anyway?”
He let it go. “Doctor Needle. Jacob Needle. He’s this geology professor. Teaches at the U of A.”
“Decent dude to give us movie-money—”
“Don’t you get it?”
JC’s eyes narrowed, then went wide.
“Oh, snap, bruh. I didn’t—man, and in the middle of the day, too! Oh, shi-i-i-i-t.”
“Yeah.”
“Yo, how often he up in there?”
Rap cranked up his eye-lasers to Obliterate.
“Naw, man, I mean, like at your place! All I mean is, you obviously hate the dude. I’m just . . . like, I feel you, knawm sayn? To have some seriously wrong old Skeletor-looking freak in your house, an he’s got a hold on your mom? That’s, like . . . hellacious. That’s Swamps of Death shit right there.”
A minivan drove around them. Hanging out the windows, two little kids eating Revells, ice cream melting down their arms.
Rap looked at JC like he was seeing him for the first time.
Rap: “Did you smell him?”
“Huh?”
“Booze!”
“Oh! Thought that was bad cologne.”
“Yeah. ‘Old Lice’. Last year he drove us home during a snow storm from some university thing. Guy was tanked. Swerving the whole time. Thought he was gonna kill us.”
“Damn, dude. Why didn’t you moms, you know, tell im to, like—”
Rap hit ARM on his lasers, and JC shut his mouth.
“When she’s out at night doing Sout Sudanese
community work or her contracts or whatever, he calls, doesn’t matter how late, always drunk, rambling on about whatever, yelling at me, saying, ‘Where is she! Where is she!’”
Swallowed. Took three tries to clear his throat.
“Called her a whore once.”
Looked up.
“If I . . . if I had the chance . . . . ”
“Damn, Rap. Fuh real.”
7.
A block west of the Hyper-Market, Rap refused to give his front tire one more revolution.
“‘So whatcha gon do?’” said JC, with as much bass as he could. To Rap, he sounded like the retarded brother from The Green Mile.
“What?”
“‘So whatcha gon do?’”
“What, is that from something?”
“I downloaded this concert movie with Richard Pryor, right? ‘So whatcha gon do?’ That’s what Jim Brown kept saying to Richard Pryor after he burnt himself free-basing and Rich was still messed up and wannid to keep on doing coke—”
Rap could tell JC was X-raying him.
“Yo, Richard Pryor was like this comedian, right, and Jim Brown was this football player—”
“I know who they are!”
But he didn’t, and he didn’t know what free-basing was, either (he heard it as free basin, and tried to figure out how a bowl could cause burns). But he definitely wasn’t gonna ask now.
“Aiight, no worries, no worries. But still, I’m sayin, ‘So whatcha gon do?’”
“About what!”
“About Brother Moon! About the Alchemy and the Street Falcons!”
JC looked up and down 111th Avenue and the sleepy holiday midday traffic. Looked back at Rap with nothing sleepy in his eyes.
“Damn, Rap, you got some Destroyer-type shit going on inside your own home, this whole last month you just ran and dove into the Swamps like they were a hot tub and y’won’t even yell for help—hell, I tried throwing you a golden chain I-don’know-how-many-times, an insteada grabbin on you just let it sink in the sludge!
“And here’s Brother Moon givin you a place to hang out, he’s teachin you martial arts, teachin you history, the Scrolls, th’Alchemy, and you, you’re shittin all over him, like, like, like . . . like a little bitch.” Nodding, biting his lip, eyebrows way the hell up. “Aiight? I said it. Just because he got mad at you for some shit you did which almost messed up everything he was tryin to build—”
“You were there too, JC! By choice! Nobody put a knife to your nuts!”
“Yeah, you right! An I told im I was sorry! An I was!”
Rap marveled at the situation. Here was JC was burning him down. And yet . . . he didn’t feel any fire.
Maybe it was because of what he saw in JC’s eyes.
Still. “He doesn’t care about me.”
“Bullshit!
“He ever even ask about me?”
“Yes! Constantly!”
Rap looked back down 111th at the boarded-up Wendy’s, like maybe he could hide inside it.
“Can’t stay shadowed forever, dude!”
Rap looked him full on, and JC ripped him.
“You got so little forgiveness in your heart, man, you won’t even talk to this brother?” JC blinked repeatedly then turned a second and palmed his eyes.
Turned back, eyes red and still blinking.
“You really that Lead-headed?”
“Don’t be calling me a Leadite—”
“Then why you always drowning yourself in the Swamps?”
“What the hell’re you talking about? I don’even drink!”
“Dude, Swamps aint just drugs an shit! Yeah, for some dudes. For another it’s too much porn, or another dude it’s being a super-ho. But for you? No disrespect, I’m sure you got your history and all, but you’re one angry, grudge-holding motherfucker. You grip a grudge like a anchor grippin mud! And there you are, drownin at the bottom of the Swamps an you just won’let go! Kickin with your last breath anybody who cares enough to swim down and try and drag you up!”
JC raised a finger at him, nearly wagged it. Like an angry elementary school teacher. Bared his teeth.
“Time to replace-and-elevate. Drain your Swamps. Before they drain you.”
Before Rap could drop a word, JC biked the block to the Hyper-Market without looking back.
Rap watched JC hop off, lock up, disappear inside.
Finally Rap turned around and biked away.
His tires took him everywhere and nowhere.
Finally, when September’s sun descended to bathe the city in indigo, Rap rolled up along 118th Avenue. At the Camel Boys Café he laid his Spock-bill on the counter and bought three ground beef sambusas and a cream soda.
A couple of Somali guys, probably a couple of years older than he was, started glancing and then staring at him, turning back and whispering to each other and smiling and glancing back again.
He took off.
On 107th Ave near the All Nations Centre, Rap slowed down at the sight of a fire hydrant shooting water into the street. A couple of city workers crouched around it doing something that didn’t look like much of anything.
Instead of plowing through their super-puddle, Rap hopped up onto the sidewalk across the street, watching the churning lagoon vibrate streetlights into snapping electric arcs.
Night time and shooting water.
Before he and his mum’d moved to Al Hambra, the three-storey walk-up on 118th Avenue (to get away from all those trouble-making Somalis, she said), they’d lived in that north side basement suite. He hadn’t known the expression “latch-key kid” back then, but that’s what he’d been.
One cool September Saturday evening, out of curiosity, he’d twisted and twisted the hot water tap to see how far it would go, only to be cannoned by scalding water shooting straight up from the dislodged tap.
Within seconds the water was swelling around his feet.
His mum was out working and after five minutes of banging on the door to the upstairs renters he realised they weren’t home and so he’d slopped high-speed down the street in his soaking long johns looking for any adult who could help him. A man he found raced back with him to the suite and turned off the hot water valve and left without any English words passing between them except his own “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you—”
The city workers turned off the water.
Hunched over his handlebars, Rap stared into the draining pond.
Water, water
Nuff to drown a son or daughter
Wash away a certain slaughter?
It oughta . . . it oughta . . . .
8.
Midnight. Basement suite was dark.
Nearly jumped when he saw her there in the shadows.
Streetlight struck her puffy eyes.
“Where’ff you been?” she snapped. Her ever-throaty voice was scratchy. Even squeaky.
“I—” She was never home before he was. He didn’t have any lies ready. “I was just—”
“Your little Somali friend Jamal called. We hatt a goot long talk about this, this, this caalt you’ve joined!”
God. JC again. And Somali.
“It’s not a cult, all right? Jeez! Since when do you care what I do?”
“Whatt? How can you say that? Of corrus I care!”
“You didn’t even know JC was my friend! I was hanging out with him practically the whole summer! Didn’t you ever wonder what I was doing all day? Where I was going?”
“You’re a youngk man! I’m your maather . . . I didn’t wannit to . . . to smaather you!”
“Yeah. Yeah. Smother. That’s funny.”
“Don’tt you use that tone with me!”
The phone rang. His mother didn’t move.
“What’s wrong?” said Rap. “Not gonna answer it? It’s only midnight.”
“What’s thatt suppossit to mean?”
“Had another fight? What’d he do this time?”
“Don’tt you talk to me like thatt! I’m not one of those White
suburb yuppies raising some snotty little brat! You answer me!”
“You wanna know? You really wanna know?”
“Yes!”
Ring. Ring.
Silence.
“When you’re out doing your work, your volunteering, being everywhere in the world but here, Doctor Liberia spends—”
“Don’t call him that.”
“—Doctor Liberia spends all night calling here! Drunk like some old bum in the streets, yelling—yelling at me. ‘Where is she?’ Like I know!”
Ring. Ring—
“It’s why I can’t even stay awake some times in class. An you don’even wanna know what kinda names he calls you!”
Ring. Ring. Ring.
Ring. Ring.
Ring.
Silence.
Streetlight in her eyes, glistening down her cheeks.
Good. Good! Not just who has to feel it!
“All these times, you out there with him, bringing him here—the guy’s married! Married, mum! How can you do that to yourself? An him taking us to his goddamned Faculty Club party and showing you off like meat and me some kinda thing he’s got no choice to bring along, like goddamned Curious George, an half those people you’re shaking hands with prolly know his wife and his kids! How you think that makes me feel, huh? Knowing what they think about you? Knowing what these Somalis everywhere in the community think about you?”
The gates had busted clean off the hinges, and now seventeen years’ worth was rushing out in a torrent.
“‘You little shit!’ That’s what calls me every time he calls and I hafta tell him you’re not here! ‘Quit lying to me! Where is she? Who’s she fucking? You’re eating food I paid for, you little little shit! I’m the one paying half her goddamn rent, so you better tell me—’”
“No, no, Raphael, he wouldn’tt—please, tell me he doesn’tt . . . I didn’tt . . . I didn’tt know—”
“Oh, so it’s okay he talks to you like that, just not to me? You really think that?”
“Raphy, Raphy!” Hunched over, face in her hands and looking up at him, eyes begging. “Why didn’t you tell me? If I’d known, I wouldn’t’ve—Raphy, I won’t let him—”
The Alchemists of Kush Page 17