I walked over to the window. I drew the sheer curtains aside, looked out onto our empty street. JFK’s inaugural speech began to thunderous applause. We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom … The record was scratchy. The hairs on my neck rose, standing at attention as my mother’s prayers and my father’s tears crowded the room. The window was sweating. I made ticks on the glass with my finger—twelve candles with flickering flames atop each. I sang “Happy Birthday” in my head and pretended to blow them out.
Trapped Stars
“He tells himself, ‘My flower’s up there somewhere …’ but if the sheep eats the flower, then for him it’s as if, suddenly, all the stars went out. And that’s not important?”
ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY
— 1 —
THE MORNING AFTER I saw Jesus in the limpet shell, my father closed himself into the small room at the back of the house he called his office. He opened the door only to take the cigarettes he’d sent me to buy from Senhora Rosa.
When Senhora Rosa gave me the change, she held on to my hand, closed her eyes, and whispered something in Portuguese that I didn’t understand. She wouldn’t let go. Senhora Rosa knew. She had plugged herself into some wacky game of broken telephone. My hand became scorching hot and she got all bug-eyed. I pulled my hand away and ran straight home, locking myself in my room for the rest of the day.
The very next day Senhora Rosa knocked at our door. Her arthritis was gone, she said, her gnarled fingers straightened. I saw her standing at the door, looking over my mother’s shoulder. She was trying to push herself in with outstretched arms, reaching for me. “She’s nuts,” I had said to my mother after she almost shoved Senhora Rosa out the front door and locked it. “Her fingers still looked crooked to me.”
Senhora Rosa’s visit had given my father an idea and he ran off to the local lumber store on Dundas Street. He returned with new tools, two-by-fours, and sheets of plywood all stacked in the back of his truck. He paid for everything on credit, which made both my mother’s eyes twitch. Everything we had, we had paid for with cash-money—a Portuguese expression that embarrassed me. My father disappeared into the garage.
The phone rang. My mother let it ring a few more times before picking it up.
“Hello?” she whispered. “He’s right here, Manelinho,” my mother exhaled, handing me the receiver.
“What’s up?” I asked Manny.
“Can you meet at the garage?”
“Mãe, Manny’s inviting me to go play at his house.”
“You’re going straight there? Are his parents at home?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, just be home by six. Your father wants you home by then.”
“I’ll meet you there, Manny.”
I walked up the street toward Manny’s house. My mother came onto the veranda and pretended she had to sweep the path. I opened Manny’s front gate and checked to see if she was watching. She stood at our fence, looking straight at me and not even hiding the fact that she was tracking my every move. I made my way through Manny’s backyard, climbed up to the roof of his garage, hand-dropped into the lane, and looped back to James’s garage.
I told Manny about Senhora Rosa. He rolled around laughing on the floor. I couldn’t get a word out of him. He got so loud that I was sure he’d upset James; it was our first day back in the garage since he’d taken Agnes in. Manny kept making the sign of the cross and then holding his balls and curling up and rocking. While Manny was busting a gut, Ricky wanted to know everything, every detail, and when I had finished he whispered in my ear, so close that it tingled, “You think I can I borrow the limpet tonight? I’ll bring it back, I promise.”
James remained at the table. I heard Agnes weeping up in the loft. If anyone should have the limpet it was Agnes. “You just don’t play with shit like that,” James said, directing his comment at Manny. “It’s not right.”
It was the Saturday of the Labour Day weekend and my father had given me ten dollars—more than he’d ever given me before—to get my back-to-school supplies at Woolworth’s. I came home with two bags full and ran upstairs to my room. I threw the bags on my bed and that’s when I noticed everything laid out for me: soap, new clothes, a comb, and even some sandals. I had some sense of what I was expected to do, and thinking about it made me gnaw at my fingernails. I used the fresh bar of soap in my bath—goat’s milk soap with a hint of mint. I dressed in a pair of linen shorts and a spray-starched shirt, fresh creases evidence that my mother had just ironed them. I wiggled my feet into the sandals and buckled them up. When I was done, I looked the part: angelic.
I sauntered along the path that led to our garage, past the rows of collard greens and hockey-stick teepees of beans. I took my time, tried to slow things down. The heat rose in waves to tickle the blue sky. I opened the door and stepped into the garage, blinking as my eyes adjusted. When I could see again, it was apparent my father had been hard at work. The brick walls were bare, the rafters and nails had been stripped of rope and jars and buckets. His hatched plan zoomed into focus.
“You like?” my father asked. The harsh light in the garage lit up his cheeks, and shadows dug into his crow’s feet. He knelt on a makeshift stage, tacking in the last bit of artificial turf over the plywood. He wore his hat set far back on his head. In the summer humidity the concrete floor was still a bit sticky with paint. I lifted my foot and checked the bottom of my sandal.
“Is that where I sit?” I asked, pointing to the dining-room chair set in the corner of the stage. Two bedspreads, both white and made of heavy cloth, hung on pocket rods in the corner. The stage itself took up one entire corner of the double garage. My father’s flourishes to make it look more like a church or a chapel hadn’t been lost on me. Candles and some pictures, small and unclear, rested on a shelf. My father had taken a cookie tin and cut a slot in the top, and it dangled from a thin wire nailed to mortar.
“Sit down,” he said. “Try it out.”
I climbed up the two steps and sat in the chair.
“It’ll do,” he said. My mother had said it was my job to love my father. I knew I couldn’t say no to any part of his plan.
My mother appeared in the doorway wearing her hospital uniform, the sunlight hitting her back, the rays spreading out around her as if she were a saint. A jumble of red was tucked under her arm. She stepped inside. All the hammering, the excuses we had been making to angry men who called wondering why my father hadn’t shown up with his dump truck, demanding refunds, it was all becoming clear to her now too.
My father ripped the velvet from the crook of my mother’s arm, cracked it in the dusty air, then held it by its gold tassels in front of me like a bullfighter. It was our Christmas tree skirt, trimmed with tinsel from a garland.
“This is your cape,” he said, swirling the tree skirt in the air before letting it fall over my shoulders. His thick fingers tied the tassels together. His knuckles brushed against my chin as he did so.
He stepped back to take a look. The tinsel scratched my neck.
I could see my mother looking anywhere but at my father. “This is not what we talked about. It’s not right.”
“It’s what they want. It’s what they are looking for,” he said.
“Not on the back of our son, it’s not.”
“Rosa Medeiros suffered from arthritis only a few days ago. Now she sits behind the counter and crochets like a young girl,” he said.
My parents argued. Obviously they had forgotten that I spent years with my grandmother. Now I was glad she had drilled some Portuguese into my head.
“That woman should mind her store and that’s it,” my mother said, “not start these stories that make no sense. Manuel, yes, God shows himself in these ways, but he’s just a boy,” my mother said. “There has never been a sign before.”
Was I a sign? I didn’t feel any different. The night before, I had tried to test my powers. I pointed to the alarm clock in my room, focused real hard, tried
to blast it with the electricity Senhora Rosa spoke of. I thought sonar waves might work better, like Aquaman, so I squeezed my eyes shut, concentrating on sending mental waves that would move my bed, just a little bit. Nothing. I tried something smaller. No use. Then it occurred to me that if God did give me some kind of superpower, He would want me to do good things with His gift. Blowing up a clock wouldn’t count. Exhausted, I realized if it were truly a miracle, then God would have to let me know somehow. But maybe Senhora Rosa’s hands uncurled because it was something she wanted so badly. Like when I trained my brain to dream about Agnes and she showed up in my dream the very same night.
“I built the stage and kneeler. We can direct the flow of people. They’ll say a prayer, take a look at the shell, and drop in some loose change …”
“A carnival!”
“It helps them believe.”
“In what?”
“Their prayers,” he whispered. “You’ll deny them that? And the money will be used to do good. Most of it, anyway.”
“I’ve prayed every night for the answer and this isn’t it.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it’s a lie. For us, for Antonio.”
“But maybe not,” my father said. “Believing heals. That doesn’t hurt anyone.”
“He’s our son.”
“It’s you who goes to church. It’s you who tells me about miracles. And yet when one happens, when the miracle is born under our roof, you throw it away like garbage.”
“You don’t even believe! Padre Costa is going to hear about this and—”
“I’m sure he will. And he’ll come knocking for his cut.”
My mother turned to go.
“Don’t be foolish, Georgina,” my father called after her. “You hear me? You knew what you were doing when you sewed that cape.”
My mother turned her back on him, focusing her eyes on me. She’d make it all better; we’d manage to get this—the stage, the lights, the cape—dismantled by the end of the week.
“Plug in those lights!” he ordered, in English.
My mother hesitated for only a moment. In a daze, she bent down and took hold of the end of an extension cord.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Hands slapping on aluminum doors, gravel scuffing the soles of shoes. They were growing restless, kicking the garage door to be let in.
A newly hung chandelier, spray-painted gold, dangled above the chair, the glow casting a wonky circle around me.
I felt something pinching on the left side of the cloak. I patted it down and felt a tiny bump there. I lifted the left flap of the cape. Another medallion of St. Anthony dangled from a diaper pin, and with it was my mother’s gold swallow, its forked tail slightly dented. I let the flap of the cape fall before my father saw it.
He was busy arranging the clay pots of begonias along the steps and doing another walk through the maze of velvet cords he had tied around the garage to guide those who would come to pray. Every so often he’d stop, rub his stubble with his knuckles, before adjusting the posts and ropes again.
When he looked at me now, there was a glimmer in his eyes, like he was proud of me. Even though I knew that I hadn’t done anything to deserve it, it made me feel good. Maybe my father just wanted to spend time with me, as my mother had insisted when he first started talking about this whole thing. All I could do now was pray my friends would not be there when the garage door opened, laughing at my ridiculous outfit.
Bang. Bang. Bang. “Open up!”
My father now held a margarine container. He looked at me, his eyes so clear, so blue. He tipped over the tub and tapped a couple of times. The chunk of ice made a sucking sound before it plopped onto a silver tray that I recognized from our dining-room china cabinet. The shell was frozen in the block of ice, the image of Jesus looking like it was trapped under a lake.
My father cupped my face with his clammy hands. “Now when I open the door, you no be afraid.”
“How long do I have to be here?”
“Things go very fast.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“You no say nothing.”
“What if they speak to me?”
“You make like this,” he said, tracing the four points of the cross in the air. A current of electricity ran through my body. “They come in and go around the ropes before they reach you. See this piece of tape?” With his toe, my father tapped a strip of duct tape he had stuck to the floor. It was barely visible against the painted concrete. “They stop here until I say okay. And then they move again.”
“But what are they going to do?”
“They kneel, they will make prayers, they take a look at the lapa, and then they leave.”
“That’s it?”
“Maybe they drop some money in the basket at your feet. Just a little something for the church.”
“And the candles?”
“Another little something more, to make sure God hears them.” He adjusted my cape, then placed his hands on my shoulders. He pressed down hard, his way of announcing it was time. “You ready?”
I nodded. My eyes focused on the upside-down Jesus in the lapa.
“You is a good boy.”
More thunder, as the aluminum door lifted up to the ceiling. My father’s work looked junky now. I could see patches of exposed plywood where the fake turf had run short. A crumbling brick wall that held uneven two-by-fours displaying old black-and-white photos of me when I was a kid: catching a small wave at the beach, riding the antique cars at the amusement park, trying to cross the splash ladder at the playground.
Fifty people or so—old, young, men and women, a few children—walked in the way they walked into church, dabbing their fingers into some water my father had poured into a chipped teacup. The women covered their heads with veils and had rosaries tangled between their fingers. Some carried flowers in the bend of their arms. Some were in wheelchairs. The men had guck in their hair—shiny, like engine oil. They wore dark suits and stank of drugstore cologne. I heard one woman sing a high-pitched “Ave Maria,” her voice then drowned out by others that joined in and harmonized.
A slender woman, probably in her late twenties or so, was the first in line. On my father’s nod, she crossed the tape and threw herself down on the ground. Her veil flapped up like wings. Her arms spread out on the first step. The room turned quiet. She bowed her head in prayer over the block of ice, examining the shell. She looked up, the joy spread across her face.
“I’ve had four children,” she said. “Not one of them born alive.”
I glued my eyes to the shell. It could have been a picture of anyone. Who was to say it wasn’t one of the hoboes that sat on the bank steps at Queen and Bathurst, or just a farmer with a long beard. I shouldn’t have said anything. I should have thrown the damn limpet shell into the pile with all the others.
The swooshing blood between my hot ears was blocking what the woman was saying to me, what she was asking for. I steadied my wrist and lined my fingers, my palm to the side like I was going to karate-chop the woman’s head. I was reaching back to scratch my itchy earlobes. But she caught me with her expectant eyes. My head was pounding, my throat dry. I slowly cut the sign of the cross in the air, the same way Padre Costa did up at the altar. The woman rolled her eyes back and collapsed on the steps. The crowd swayed and moaned in a wave of Alleluias.
My father helped her to her feet, almost dragging her outside for some air. I heard the scrape of her shoes on the concrete and the clink of money dropping into a tin can.
— 2 —
WHEN SCHOOL STARTED my mother made me promise to walk home with my friends, never alone, and within half an hour of the final bell, so that Edite could drop by to check up on me and my sister. She warned me not to speak to anyone about what was going on in our garage. Do as your teacher says and it will be a good year. She didn’t have to worry, because no one spoke to me. The first day back, kids I had known since kindergarten parted to make a path for me in the halls, a
nd they went quiet every time I came back into the classroom from the washroom with a buddy, which was a new rule—you could only go to the bathroom in pairs.
At recess, Odette Cabral walked like a cripple toward Sofia Nunes. Sofia touched her forehead like healers in white suits did on television and Odette stumbled back, cured and walking straight. Odette’s sausage curls bounced as she giggled in her huddle. They knew I was watching and only turned away when their little play was over. At least Manny treated me like he always had. “Oh that beautiful boy, an angel really, came in for milk,” Manny mimicked Senhora Rosa, right down to placing an imaginary kerchief over his head and tying a knot under his chin. “I touched his hand and a heat ran through my body. Like God had entered me Himself.”
When we were alone, Ricky told me I had been given a gift. “God chooses people, you know. He chose you.” He was serious, and I missed him. He had been pulled out of my classroom on the first day and placed in Manny’s class. I was happy Manny would be there to look after him, or the other way around.
Our teachers didn’t live in our neighbourhood, but Manny said he overheard two of them talking outside the library about saints and sinners and the circus in back alleys, and so we knew they must have heard about the limpet.
“I don’t care,” I said. Our teachers didn’t either, not really. They spent those first weeks trying to make sense of Emanuel’s murder for us. From day one, every assignment, every class discussion, had a kind of sadness to it. Mr. Sowerby, my teacher, had picked some students to decorate the class bulletin board. They covered it with banner paper and bubble-letter headings: WHO? WHAT? WHERE? WHEN? WHY? And HOW? The biggest heading read, CURRENT EVENTS! We were expected to read the Toronto Star every day—my father eventually agreed to a subscription—and each morning one student had to bring in a news story and present his findings, the story dissected like a frog and carefully pinned under the headings on the bulletin board. The stories were all about Emanuel Jaques or Yonge Street or City Hall or immigrants. It was like Mr. Sowerby was telling us it was okay to feel like crap. We played along.
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