“Rowan,” I say.
His eyes are glassy and his shirt is off and tucked into his belt, so that the soft muscles of his body and his Sossi tattoo are visible. I know right away that it was pointless to come looking to him for money.
“What are you doing here?” he says, his words watery and blended together, slippery in his mouth.
“I came with Josephine.”
“You shouldn’t be out here,” he says.
“Do you know how long you’ve been gone? Do you know how worried we’ve been?”
He flips his hand at me like it’s not a big deal, turning and walking through the crowd. “Don’t waste your time worrying about me,” he says over his shoulder, and I follow him quickly, not wanting to let him out of my sight.
He turns down a quiet alley, where the noise of the Corridor only hums, where people are huddled in groups, smoking pipes.
“Go home, Elimina,” he says, closing his eyes.
“Is this where you go? Is this where you hang out, Rowan?” I say, looking around as he shrugs. “What are you doing for money?”
He shrugs again, running both hands across the top of his head like he wants to get away and doesn’t know how, growling without saying any words.
“What the hell, Rowan?”
“I saw the picture, Elimina,” he says, pacing across the alley. “Of you, crying. The Woman Who Wept. That’s what they call you. The Woman Who Wept. Did you know that you’re all over the Mainland? Articles everywhere. The Woman Who Wept knocked up by failed boxer.”
“I know, Rowan,” I say, but I don’t lower my head or turn away. I just stand there with my chin up like Geneva.
“You knew?”
“I’ve known for a while.”
“You’ve been writing to David all this time? Sending him letters and poetry? How do you think that makes me feel?”
“I don’t know, Rowan,” I say. “How do you feel?”
“I’m here trying to put food on the table and keep a roof over your head, and you’re writing to him? Trying to go to the Hill with our kids?”
“Our kids? You hardly even see DJ. You missed the first months of his life and now you’re here, but you’re still never here, Rowan. And when was the last time you gave me any money?”
“I can never do enough for you,” he says, shaking his head.
We stand there, leaning against the wall for a moment, feeling so much but saying nothing, like we both know it’s all falling apart.
“Rowan, Mr. Gregors and the doctor at Riverside, they want me arrested. They found me. Miss Femia and the Mainlanders involved with the project, they came to the apartment.”
“Well, you’re not doing a very good job of hiding, Elimina.”
I smile for a moment. “They want to take DJ and put him into an academy. They want to send me to jail.”
Rowan shakes his head, like it’s not true, like it just won’t happen.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I thought you should know that.”
“Is that why you’re out here with Josephine? To join the Network and protest? You think that’s how you’re going to get your independence?”
“I told you. I came out here because I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“I’m great. I’m fine,” he says, but when he looks down the alley and wipes his fingers along the side of his mouth, I start to walk away because I know that he can’t help me at all.
“Elimina!” he shouts as I head back toward the Corridor.
“Forget it, Rowan. Just be careful, okay?”
“Elimina,” he says again, chasing after me as a crack and a loud popping sound come from somewhere near the Corridor.
Pop, pop, and pop, pop, pop, pop, and pop, pop, pop.
When the popping sounds stop, the screams rise and grow louder as a crowd heads down the alley, wild and frantic, some covered in blood. They bang into one another, trampling over the ones who fall, and as they get closer, Rowan uses his body as a shield, pushing me against a wall. I close my eyes and tuck my head into his shoulder, crying loud and hard because all I can think about is Josephine, Cat Cole and the Network, and everyone still left in the Corridor.
IN THE MARKETPLACE, pieces of broken wood and trampled cardboard are scattered everywhere as Mainland Guard vehicles with red flashing lights and alarms squeal down from somewhere beyond the bus terminal. In the middle of the mess, four bodies lie in spreading pools of red—two young boys, an elderly man and a young girl wearing only one shoe, her white sock soaking up blood.
“Elimina!”
Josephine runs toward me, and I feel so much relief at seeing her alive that we both cry and hold each other tightly.
“Josephine, what the hell happened?” Rowan says.
We pull apart, and Josephine looks out on the bodies and the mess with her hand resting on her chest.
“This boy, Jamal, was shouting about how Malachi owed him ten dollars, and they started pushing each other,” she says, standing in the center of the Corridor and looking around, still in shock. “They’re friends. They were just shoving, like they do, like they always do . . . But then the guards started shooting . . . into the crowd.”
When the Mainland Guard medic team roll in, they order us to get out of the way. They run tape around the whole area, and they push us down the lane, along with members of the Network who are already treating the injured on the tables that used to be filled with bowls of soup.
“Back up, Gutters,” the guards yell, trampling through the blood, and everyone moves away from the bodies, toward the low wall.
But I can’t.
I feel a pain under my belly like an anchor pulling me down, and I close my eyes and try to breathe, long and slow.
“Elimina, are you okay?” Josephine says.
I look at her and open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. I look down at my legs, and I see blood everywhere. All over my feet. Red. Blood. I try to move toward Josephine. I try to hold on to Rowan. But the blood keeps following me until I can’t stand up anymore.
45
WE CALL THEM THE CORRIDOR KILLINGS—THE DAY four people were shot and killed by guards because a boy named Malachi owed his friend Jamal ten dollars. The event is added to the Network calendar as an official day of mourning, so I can always remember the day I lost a child I never wanted.
I’m not sure if I’m sad or relieved about losing the baby, and this thought brings on dark clouds I can’t seem to break through, like a storm with no clear ending. Because maybe I did this. Maybe I didn’t want her enough. Or maybe I knew this life would kill her and I wanted to spare her from the start.
I call her Rosalind, after the mother who never knew me, and I bury her outside the Lower End with Violet and Jewel under a tree that’s filled with red gavanje birds who will always be there to look out for her.
THE MAINLAND GUARD call it a riot, and that’s the story that’s told in the papers that the Network smuggles into the Lower End the following day: “A riot broke out in the Gutter, after gangs and looters tore through the dangerous night Corridor. Guards stopped the violence from spreading, but four were wounded in the process and later succumbed to their injuries.”
But that’s not what happened at all. Friends were arguing over ten dollars and guards began shooting, wounding eight and killing four: Jamal Smith, Malachi Foster, Betty Vaughn and Jeffrey Cooper.
When I see the articles from the Mainland paper, knowing what I heard and what Josephine saw with her own eyes, I wonder about all the papers Mother and I read when I was younger, about all the lies I believed about who I am, where I’m from and where I belong.
THE REAL RIOTS come after the Corridor Killings, when the Network marches through the streets, setting fire to the Subsidy Office and to the marked vehicles of the Mainland Guards. They spray-paint “SOSSI” on buildings and signs.
“This is Sossi Land,” we shout as we march. “Redemption Freedom for all!”
The Network
sets up blockades on the road to the Lower End, shutting down all work at the factory and preventing the Mainland Guard from entering the Corridor. They demand the elimination of the Gutter System and the return of Sossi territory—starting with the area known as the Gutter—under a document entitled the Sossi Independence Act, which Cat Cole and the other leaders have been drafting for months.
When no one from the Mainland responds, the protests continue to escalate. The Network pushes the Mainland Guard back toward the Base, occupying the Upper End as well. Marches take place in the streets and speeches are held every night in the park near Geneva’s house, where the Network presents their hope for independence to crowds of legacy families.
While the Network’s breakfast program continues in the Corridor, and the midnight soup service does as well, all the Mainland papers focus on are the riots, the roadblocks, the graffiti and the fires.
“Mainland Guard Kept Out: Gutter Descends into Chaos,” the papers read, as though no one cares about how the chaos really began or the prospect of stopping it by giving Gutter folks what we want and deserve: freedom instead of scars at birth.
WHEN FOOD BECOMES scarce and the first day of the month passes with no Subsidy checks, Gutter folks in the Upper and Lower End get restless and beg the Network to negotiate with government officials who arrive three weeks into the riots, concerned about the prospect of a lengthy closure of the gun factory and the displacement of the Mainland Guard.
In the negotiations, officials agree to improve medical support by training and hiring more nurses. They agree to increase Subsidies by a dollar per day, and they promise to improve conditions for factory workers by providing masks and conducting air quality tests regularly.
When the Network reads the Mainland’s offer to a crowd of people in the Corridor, folks applaud, smiling and holding on to one another, relieved that this might finally end. But I stand there with Josephine wondering how this will change anything, wishing for an entirely different ending.
“What about the Sossi Independence Act?” I say to Josephine, who frowns as the crowd around cheers.
Cat Cole suggests making a counteroffer and asking for more—for the removal of the Mainland Guard and for a clear progression plan toward independence. “Our focus is on the elimination of the Gutter System,” she says.
But people in the crowd shake their heads, worried about further delays and thinking about their hunger instead.
“We need food,” they say, and when the crowd’s demands grow louder and more insistent, the Network agrees to accept the offer based on the wants of the overwhelming majority.
“A system can’t be broken in a moment,” Josephine says somberly as we hold each other close.
WHEN ALL THE roads reopen, and deliveries to and from the Mainland resume, I send a letter to David telling him the true story behind the Corridor Killings, knowing it will be read by people across the Mainland and the Hill. I tell him about the ten dollars and about those who died in the crossfire, and I tell him what really happened during the protests that followed—how we marched in the streets and cried out for justice and independence on behalf of Jamal Smith, Malachi Foster, Betty Vaughn and Jeffrey Cooper.
“But everything feels the same now. Just like it was before. I’m trying not to lose heart, but I feel like we’re trapped, as Cat often says, ‘in a cage of injustice.’”
I tell David about the loss of Baby Rosalind, and the terrible guilt I feel, about the worry that swallows me up at night when I lie down with DJ.
“I worry that I’m going to jail and that DJ is going to an academy, and I don’t know which is worse, the thought of being separated or the thought of him facing this terrible world alone and in debt always. I don’t want to lose DJ too, David. I don’t want to lose everything. But I don’t know how to hope anymore. I don’t know how to believe in anything.”
I MOVE IN with Josephine one month after the Corridor Killings, as the truth about that night in the Corridor draws attention across the Mainland.
“Mainland Guard Massacre Kills Four.”
“Woman Who Wept Continues to Mourn the Loss of Her Unborn Child.”
I store the articles in the box from Josephine, along with all the others, and when David responds with accounts of the protests he attends on my behalf, I read each word carefully, overwhelmed by what he shares about the response to the Woman Who Wept.
“There are people who care about you and DJ. We are fighting hard,” he writes, and this gives me a small bit of hope, a spark I can believe in, without knowing how it will end.
Josephine and I find work wherever we can as Runners, refusing to take Subsidy checks when the Subsidy Office reopens, based on the encouragement of those who have been working with the Network for a long time.
“We do not need them to survive. We need each other,” Cat says.
I do runs and I serve meals whenever I can, recording stories while I await news of my fate, and while Rowan becomes unrecognizable, lost every night in the Corridor.
At first, I feel overwhelmed by this loss, filled with a longing to fix whatever seems to haunt and torment him, whatever pulls him away from us. I am learning to let go of the things I can’t control so I can hold fast to the people I need most.
“Never lose sight of the promises we deserve and the things that are rightfully ours,” Cat says.
This is what I begin to include in the letters I write to David—stories of people working hard in a system that was meant to punish and destroy us, stories of people who fought, and are fighting, for their dreams.
Because we are still here.
I CLIMB INTO bed every night surrounded by a handful of my most prized possessions: a black box full of articles, a blue book of poems, a wood carving of a mother and child, and the boy who changed everything about me—one item from every one of the Gutter children who became my family when I found myself alone in the world, lost and without a home.
Each night, DJ begs for a story, and when he does, I clasp his fingers down so they all link together, telling him the most important one while we await news of our future. “A long time ago, the world was good and happy—land, ocean and sky, all together,” I say.
We nuzzle closer as the night grows dark and smooth, and I tell him the story of his people—our people—the people of the Land, and how we were meant to live.
A Note from the Author
This book is a work of fiction that explores a perilous world rooted in injustice. As in life, the effects of injustice impact many of the characters. Take care with your heart and your mind as you read. Pause and rest as required. These are difficult times.
Acknowledgments
I CONSIDER WRITING TO BE A LONELY, SOLITARY ACT. WHEN I finish a book, I always feel deeply indebted to those who were affected by the way I tucked myself in a corner to read the manuscript “just one more time” and to the people I stepped away from to fix “just one more little thing.”
To Mark, who treasures me in a way that makes me grateful to be exactly who I am; to Edan, who regularly reminds me with so much pride that writing is what I was meant to do; to Josh and Maddy, who were there for part of the journey and remain with me always, who came to me when I longed for more children and changed me forever by becoming a part of our family.
To Mom, Dad, Skye, Damon and Derryl, who have known me from the start and who have made me who I am, who root me on with so much love, support and applause.
To Kafi, Bo, Vernley, Beris, Karen, Jed, Ahmeda and Kylan, who came into my life along the way and who have taught me so much about the abundant blessing of family.
To Amanda, who carried me through the final stages of this project with such grace and generosity—professionally and personally.
To AJ, Dante, Justice, Asher, Marcus, Zuriel, Jibril, Jobim, Yohannes, Reina, Jotham and Judah: may you grow up knowing the incredible power of your story and your voice.
To Christina, Lamoi and the members of the Ontario Arts Council jury who read
this book in its very early stages and whose encouraging words helped me press through at times when I thought I wouldn’t finish this at all.
To Helen Humphreys and those at the Sage Hill Writing retreat I attended so many years ago, who contributed thoughts and ideas that impacted the shape of this story.
To Canisia, Léonicka, Bianca and Jay, who fill me with strength and courage by being phenomenal Black women I treasure and admire, whom I regularly turn to for strength.
To Jennifer and Carly, who believed in this work from the start and who helped this story become what it is now.
To my Creator, who fills me and equips me and guides me through every minute and with every word.
* * *
Poems mentioned in this novel are drawn from the work of Langston Hughes.
About the Author
JAEL RICHARDSON is the executive director of the Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD), the books columnist on CBC Radio’s q and an outspoken advocate on issues of diversity. She is the author of The Stone Thrower: A Daughter’s Lessons, a Father’s Life, An award-winning memoir (also published in a children’s edition) based on her relationship with her father, CFL quarterback Chuck Ealey, and of the upcoming children’s book Dear Me. Jael Richardson received an MFA in creative writing from the University of Guelph. She Lives in Brampton, Ontario.
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Praise for Gutter Child
“A fierce and astounding debut novel from a crucial voice. Jael Richardson has skillfully crafted a dystopian realm that draws from the brutal realities of colonial history and the sinister injustices of the present.”
—WAUBGESHIG RICE, author of Moon of the Crusted Snow
“It is near impossible to write a novel that is both propulsive and intricate in its knife-sharp unpicking of our social systems, but Jael Richardson has done it. And along the way she tells the story of the bonds people make under terrible conditions—the ones that make them human, even when everything around them conspires to say they are not. Gutting and lovely.”
Gutter Child Page 31