Barnacle Love

by Anthony De Sa

  “What, and he never came back? No … I don’t think so. You know they’re saying he did things … for money. And it wasn’t shining shoes.”

  “No,” Manny said. “I don’t believe what they say. I know he just rode away and didn’t want to come back.”

  I wanted to believe Manny was right. Like Emanuel, all we wanted was an escape from our little Portuguese neighborhood. We wanted our mothers to buy peanut butter, Swanson TV dinners, and macaroni and cheese. We wanted our mothers to drive—to summer camp or the Eaton Centre. We wanted our fathers to wear shirts and ties to work. We wanted them to go to the park and play with us, kick a soccer ball around. But there was always work, and then the other work they went to after dinner. If there was any time left over, it was used to fix the house and tend the gardens. It seemed we measured everything by time, or the lack of it. And we didn’t want to interpret, at the bank or when someone rang the doorbell selling Electrolux vacuum cleaners. We were tired of responding to the teasing of schoolmates—“No! We don’t eat fish every day!”—with clenched teeth. Some of us had already found ways to fight what it was we were supposed to be; my sister had gone from Terezinha to Terri, with an i, and even though my name was registered at school as Antonio, teachers always took the liberty on that first day of calling out Tony, and I never corrected them.

  For our parents, Palmerston Avenue was “back home.” Nothing had ever really changed. There were always eyes behind curtained windows, like those of Senhora Gloria, who saw and heard and thrived on all things seen and heard. Fados sifted through screen doors, the smell of barbecued sardines wove through the chain-link fences, and colorful clothing and bleached towels flapped in the warm wind until they were hard and crunchy on the clotheslines. Our backyards were contradictions, with their neat rows of beans and tomatoes and kale propped up by a mishmash of weathered dowels, old hockey sticks, and scraps of quarter-round. Nothing was ever thrown out. Everything was to be used. Squirrels and raccoons were supposedly deterred by a series of tin cans filled with dried beans, or the rattle of nails against tin pie plates suspended with twine. Large dill pickle jars sheltered the tender tomato plants from the unpredictable frost. My mother’s old pantyhose were used to tie the long bean plants on their rapid ascent. Even the large trout or bass that our neighbor Mr. Barber kindly offered my father—my mother insisted the man he lived with who lisped and wore outrageous shirts, Mr. Wolenska, was his brother—was always received with a smile and thanks, only to be whisked to the backyard where it was buried in the garden to be used as fertilizer. My father was convinced that lake fish weren’t good to eat, they didn’t have the natural sea salt that kept other fish healthy and free from disease and pollutants.

  It was an annual event—a matança—the killing. This was the kind of thing that embarrassed me; here we were in a big city with butcher shops throughout Kensington Market and yet the farmer mentality brought over from the Azores had survived.

  I watched as they dragged the pig from the dumper of my father’s truck and tied its hind legs with rope. The tongue lolled outside the pig’s mouth, its pinkness dragging on the dirty floor. Its snout was brown with gravel and sand. My Uncle David’s garage door was up so all our neighbors could see. He lived only three houses down from us on Palmerston Avenue, and it was roomier in his three-car garage. My uncles looped the rope over the rafters in the ceiling to hoist the pig off the floor. I held my breath against the taut sound of rope rubbing against the I-beam, the creaking sound of the pig’s spinning weight. Uncle Clemente kicked the large plastic pail under the limp carcass. His cigarette dangled from the corner of his lip, the ash longer than the cigarette. He picked up a bucket of boiling water, doused the pig, and stood back. It swayed in the air, encased in a swirl of steam. Both Uncle Clemente and Uncle David began to rasp its skin with a kind of flexible steel blade, looped and held together by a wooden handle. They worked like lumberjacks in a squatting dance, dragging the blades over the pig’s haunches, down its round belly, and to its ears close to the floor. Taking turns ridding the pig of its fine hair. Uncle Clemente’s glasses clouded as he worked in the putrid steam. My Uncle David then stepped in and held the pig to keep it from turning. My Uncle Clemente wiped his knife on his jeans, moved close, and leaned on the pig with one hand to steady its weight. He adjusted his footing, bent slightly before he wiped his glasses in little circles with his thumb. He looked up at me for a second before slashing the pig’s throat with one swift swipe. I wanted to turn away but was drawn to the blood’s first squirt as it gurgled and streamed into the plastic pail. It turned purple as it hit the bottom of the blue pail and then liters of it became red, almost black, once again. My Uncle Clemente looked at me and grinned. He always liked to tease.

  My father saw me come out of the garage, looked up and smiled. He had been busy digging a large hole for the pig’s guts beside the fig tree and between the rows of peppers. It was good fertilizer, he’d say. Without asking, I walked toward him and picked up a shovel to help. A daddy longlegs had been hiding under the handle and it waltzed up my arm. I let it crawl on the back of my hand before raising it safely to one of the branches above.

  “What you do?” my father said. And almost as if catching himself, “You want to help?” He sat on his haunches and hung his head between his knees. I wanted to leave. My father was spending more and more time in the basement, entertaining friends in the middle of the day with his homemade wine and presunto. He was getting meaner with his words. My mother said that work would pick up soon; Portuguese people were doing better and could now afford to renovate their basements. They’d need his truck to help them remove all that soil.

  His eyes remained fixed on me as I dropped the shovel.

  “Here, come with me.”

  I followed him back into the garage. The first pail was now full and ready for the women who would boil it for hours with parsley, garlic, and rice until it turned black and thick like mud and was ready to be forced into the bleached intestines to make sausage. Tomorrow my mother would cut one up and mangle it in a frying pan with olive oil. We’d spread it across our toast, the day before and where it came from forgotten.

  “Pronto, Clemente. I ready with the hole!”

  My Uncle Clemente placed a large stainless steel pail under the pig. I could feel my father’s hands on my shoulders; they were large and sun-dark, and their backs were covered with golden hair. My hands were small and fine and white, and the hair on them wasn’t visible, just felt like peach fuzz. A gentle squeeze was my cue to look up, pay attention. My Uncle Clemente raised a long knife over his head, turned to me and smiled once again before he plunged the knife into the pig’s belly, exposed the inches of white fatty layers that opened like flowers in time-lapse photography. He sliced firmly down to the pig’s gullet then stood back. Foul gases and steam puffed from the bloated pig. My uncle turned around. His Coke-bottle glasses had steamed over. Behind him the intestines slowly tumbled out into the pail, all blue and purple and milky as the pig swayed in suspension. With a touch of ceremony, my father took a drink of wine and passed it around to the men. They all drank and mumbled prayers of thanks as they made the sign of the cross. The stench wafted across the garage and dug into our hair and clothes and throats. My father offered me the cup of wine but my stomach churned and my head spun.

  “Filho, bring this stuff to the hole I dig outside.” He pointed to the jumble of guts. He stopped in mid-sentence to watch me spew the few pieces of toast I’d had that morning all over the garage floor. My Uncle David rolled his eyes and Uncle Clemente just shook his head, another thing to hose down on what was an already busy day. My father came over and lifted me up. I tucked my head and snotty nose into his collar, took in his scent of Old Spice as we moved through the backyard then down the stairs into the cool darkness of the basement. I could see my mother in the cellar kitchen chopping onions.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “He’s no feeling good.” My father cupped my face. �
�Okay? … Okay?” He placed me on the covered sofa. Everything in my uncle’s basement—sofa, chairs, coffee table, and the large wooden TV—had once been on the main floor. The living room had been converted to a bedroom when my grandmother and Aunt Louisa came from Portugal. A large floral bedspread that hung from a line divided the basement kitchen and family room. It was held up by wooden clothes pegs with rusted hinges. When we had large family gatherings, the bedspread came down and was converted into a tablecloth for the large pieces of plywood sitting on A-frames that were used as a dining table. There was a strange sense of comfort in knowing the routines and in understanding the function of every object in the house.

  My mother came to sit beside me in her wilted dress. Her hair was tucked under her kerchief. She gently stroked my hair. I closed my eyes and heard my father’s footsteps as he moved away from me; her cool breath blew on my damp forehead. My aunts whispered behind the curtain. They sat around the kitchen table and chopped onions or parsley.

  “It’s been a few days now. Still not a word, not even close to finding him.” I could hear my Aunt Louisa’s frustration tugging at her voice.

  “They took his name away, you know. They gave him a new name—Shoeshine Boy,” my Aunt Zelia replied. “This is not a Portuguese name.”

  “What that poor boy’s mother must be feeling. She must be crying like a Magdalena, cursing the day she came here.” There was only a moment of silent contemplation. “She knows, she must know, a mother knows.”

  “The news say he try saving money to buy a ticket for his mother, to go visit back home,” Aunt Zelia added.

  “I no hear that,” Aunt Louisa interjected. “I hear other stories about that boy and what boys like him shining shoes do for extra money.”

  My mother moved back into the smoky kitchen. The discussion continued but no longer penetrated the padded bedspread that divided our two worlds. My aunts had taken note of my mother’s admonitions.

  It was hot. I needed air.

  Quietly, I made my way upstairs and out the front door and onto my bike. I took hungry gulps, filling my lungs to clear my nose of the smell that attached itself to me.

  “Hey!”

  I looked to Manny’s veranda. All I could see was his curly black hair above the porch railing. He ran to meet me at the gate.

  “Let’s go!” I said.

  “We can’t.”

  I saw his mother at the front door calling him inside. She sounded anxious and mad.

  “They found him on a rooftop … Yonge Street … a massage parlor … under some boards, drowned … like garbage.” Manny punched the words into the still summer air. He shrugged his shoulders then, wide-eyed, whispered, “He’s dead.”

  I didn’t need to ask who was dead.

  “Mannelinho!” his mother wailed.

  Manny jumped up all five steps of his porch and the screen door slammed behind him as he disappeared into his house.

  Stunned, I pedaled my way home. I found myself in our unfinished basement. The floor was concrete, painted in battleship gray, and the walls were covered with wood-paneled wainscoting. It was an open space with exposed joists, and it was partitioned by function. At the far end was the laundry area with washing machine and double laundry tub; across from it was the stove—every self-respecting Portuguese had a kitchen in the basement. The rest of the basement had an old backseat of a Chevy my father brought home one day and a console television that stood next to the doorway to our adega, where the fat-bellied oak barrels rested on their wooden blocks. An old hospital sheet with three blue lines on it marked the entry to this spot.

  I flicked on the TV and sat back on the seat, where the backs of my legs stuck to the leather. In a daze I rolled down my tube socks and scratched the itchy red ring that encircled my shins and calves. My socks had been held up all day long by elastic bands that my mother kept in a small bag in a drawer. I rubbed the groove that had been carved into my leg.

  We didn’t have cable, only CBC and, depending on the weather, channel 7, which was 79 on the second dial. Anita Bryant strolled through an orange grove in her shiny white dress and perfectly coiffed hair. She looked so different from the woman who was leading the Save Our Children campaign. “And remember, breakfast without orange juice is like a day without sunshine.” I could feel my sister move behind the couch, and when I looked back I saw she had a towel wound like a genie’s turban on her head.

  “She should have stuck to selling oranges,” my sister said.

  The news resumed. My sister sat next to me and tucked her legs under her bum. I leaned into the TV.

  “This is the street corner where Emanuel Jaques was last seen. Four days ago he was seen here shining shoes and then disappeared into what many consider the cesspool of the city, Yonge Street. Reports suggest that he and his brother and friend were approached by a man …”

  Terri unwrapped the towel to scrunch up her wet hair and I could smell the Ivory soap.

  “Emanuel’s older brother alleges a man asked … thirty-five dollars.” My mind began to wander. “He and his friend to move camera equipment … call home … to see … and upon his return, Emanuel was gone … vanished.” They plastered a picture of the large-eyed boy on the screen. It was all we had seen the last few days. He had a soft face and his smile seemed sincere between the large curls that framed his cheeks. “The search is over. The body of a twelve-year-old boy police have identified as Emanuel Jaques has been found on the rooftop of—”

  “Ouch!” I roared. My sister had pinched my thigh.

  “Don’t ever go with anyone. Got it?” She moved to turn off the television, but stopped when the hysteric wails of a mother trilled behind the interviewer’s questions. She was speaking Portuguese. I understood the words, what she was saying, the pain and suffering in what could not be translated. It somehow felt too close to home.

  I skidded my bike into my uncle’s garage. There wasn’t much left of the pig; only the hind legs remained to be cured as they dangled and twisted from the wooden rafters. The uncles had whittled away with their saws, and the pieces of meat had been divided: organ bucket, rib bucket, and so on. I was trying to catch my breath so I could tell them the news. I had dropped my bike on the gravel laneway, ignoring the kickstand. Before I could say anything, my Uncle Clemente caught me around the waist, laughed as he tried to shove something in my mouth. The men cheered him on as I squirmed in his hold. My uncle had rammed the pig’s tail in my mouth. Part of it curled around my tongue and the rest lodged in the roof of my mouth. They all laughed as I gagged then spat it out. I stood hunched over, building saliva to spit the taste out of my mouth. They patted me on the back. I was caught off guard. I looked to my father.

  “You is a man now,” he whispered, his stubble scraping against my cheek.

  I spat the taste out of my mouth, grabbed at my father’s warm wine and threw it hard against the back of my throat. This led to another wave of “Força!” and further bouts of approval with “Um homem. A man now.”

  Everything became blurred by the tears that blanketed my eyeballs. The sounds around me became muted. I scanned the faces with their mouths wide open. I smeared the wine across my lips.

  They don’t know yet. They don’t know about Emanuel.

  I won’t tell them.

  I picked up my bike and sped away.

  I will hold on to this, certain it will hurt them.

  I rode past all those boarded-up shops on Queen Street, past all the drunks toward Spadina … My lungs were filled with a burning fire. My throat was dry and their voices grew nearer, louder: “Treat you good, like one of the boys” … City Hall and then Yonge Street … I could hear the thunder of their feet on cement. They clipped my heels and I fell forward with my hands splayed out like spiders. My wrists buckled against the pavement. I looked at my hands, striped with thin lines like red hair … I rode up the street, passed the neon signs and the dirty curbs that lined the new Eaton Centre … They touched me with their strong hands. They tugg
ed at my shirt, tore at me as I looked up into a searing sun, and they groped. I wanted to dip my hands into cold water to soothe their burning … The haunting images left me as I pedaled faster and allowed the breeze to rush up my nose and fill my lungs.

  I stopped just above Dundas Street—across the street from a place called Charlie’s Angels that had been cordoned off with yellow tape. I stood there straddling my bike, leaning over my handlebars, and watched along with the news teams, reporters, and everyone else who gathered. Silence. We all seemed to be waiting for something. There were so many people around and yet I felt a reverence, a numbing quiet, alone in a big city I didn’t recognize underneath a blood-orange sun.

  I pedaled my way back home, slowly now, and turned up Palmerston Avenue. I don’t know how long I had been away. Everyone should have been outside; the streetlights weren’t on yet. I’m sure they’ve heard by now. I pedaled so slowly I was barely moving, fighting to keep my balance as I curved up the sidewalk, grappling the handlebars. Where is everyone? I passed one expectant porch after another where plastic crates held empty pop bottles, where rubber mats awaited muddy shoes, and where the blue-and-white glazed saints, azulejos, whispered empty blessings.

  My mother moved toward me down the empty street. I could see the white lace of her slip, lit by the moonlight, peeking from the bottom of her dress. As she met me I cowered slightly. She smelled of blood sausages and onions and warm paprika.

  “Where did you go? Get in that house, now!” There was fear and anger tinged with relief in her voice.

  I walked my bike through our front gate and dropped it on the lawn. The wheel spun slowly in the air.

  She drew her sweater tightly across her breasts, tucked her hands under her armpits and then shivered. It wasn’t cold. Once inside I turned to see her look through the screen door before sliding the handle to LOCK. Then she closed the front door and did the same. It was the first time I heard the click of the deadbolt.