Kicking the Sky

by Anthony De Sa

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” James finally said. I pressed my forehead to the window the way my mother did when she sat on the worm-picker. “I was seven when my mother left.” His elbows stretched across the seat over my shoulder. He leaned in. I shifted away. “She said she was going to find my father, bring him back home. I was so excited. Just thinking about it, those words, my father. I waited. Never had a family like yours. My grandfather was the only other person to take care of me. He hadn’t wanted my mother to go. He had said that’s how he lost his wife, to the flash of the big city.” I leaned my head against the streetcar window. “I kept thinking of how my mother’d come home with her arms full of toys and my father, who I had never met, would walk in behind her. It’s what kept me going, you know? I practised my reading so I would impress my father when he came home. I was ten, I think, when I realized they would never come.” I heard him swallow his spit. I couldn’t bear to look at him and I was sure he wouldn’t continue if I did.

  “My grandfather was a crazy bastard sober, turned devil with a bit of drink. He bought this dog, didn’t allow me to give it a name. ‘Go feed, Dog!’ he’d yell, which meant throwing scraps at the thing because it was chained to the tree all day long.” James stopped. The streetcar swept along Dundas Street, past Chinatown. There wouldn’t be much time for James to finish his story.

  “One day—I was fifteen—I came home and before I could even make my way through the front door, he tackled me, wrapped a chain around my ankles. It happened so fast. He dragged me through the snow and tied the chain to that same tree out back.” We had stopped at Kensington Market and the Project, the buildings all uniform like piled bricks. “What the fuck is he doing? It kept going on in my head like a skipped record. What the fuck is he doing? Then I saw him come from the front of the house. That beast of a dog was pulling him forward. ‘Make a man of you yet, boy, not a fuckin’ crybaby.’ ”

  I saw James’s reflection in the window. He was someplace else.

  “He let go of Dog. I covered my face, but he went at my head, tore at my thigh. I kicked. Then I punched. ‘You got to fight dirty if you ever gonna make something of yourself, boy.’ I reached for its collar, held its head in the snow. Get it off! That’s when it got loose, lunged at me and dug into my face. ‘Fight back! Because if you don’t, the world’s gonna swallow you up and spit you out.’ The dog was yanked back, clear off its paws. ‘Get him, you little fucker!’ ” James said, softly.

  “BANG!” James jumped off his seat as he said it. I jumped with him. Even the streetcar driver looked back at us. “My grandfather shot into the air. Slung the rifle over his shoulder and went back into the house with his dog. Bastard.”

  I traced the pink scar along his jaw with my eyes. “I tied a rag around my head. It kept the blood in check and held the skin in place.”

  “How did you get away?”

  “That same night I set a trap, one of those nasty things that look like the jaws of a shark, with all those teeth. I hooked some meat on it and dragged it close enough to the barking dog. He went for the meat and the trap snapped shut.” James clapped the air for added effect. “Clear took its fuckin’ head off.”

  “And your grandfather?” I asked, lowering my voice. The streetcar was in front of Sanderson Library. I reached up and rang the bell.

  “He was there. He could hardly stand. He crouched in the snow and patted the dog’s head. Its body was five feet away. He stood up, old bastard. Started clapping—loud and slow. Then he laughed. Said, ‘I’m the only family you got, boy.’ And that’s when I ran as fast as I could, straight at the miserable geezer. I rammed into him so hard he fell backwards, right into the tree and the rusted nail that waited for him.”

  James looked at me. I nodded as though I understood his pain, even though I didn’t. All I felt was an emptiness in my stomach.

  “When I left that night, the snow had almost completely covered him. Frosty the fuckin’ Snowman. But the old bastard sat crouched against the tree, giggling. He was fuckin’ demented.”

  James raised his knees and hugged them, drew his sleeve across his nose, then into his mouth. “Never told anyone before.” He hugged his legs tighter and looked out the streetcar window. “It’s our stop,” he said.

  — 8 —

  2 :11 P.M. … I had been getting to the garage later and later. I was doing it on purpose. My father knew it and was losing patience. Earlier that morning, I lay curled up in bed, unable to move, flashes of the moustached man in the van offering us money; the pimply boy waiting in his tight jeans; the cars turning the corners, slowly, before taking another turn at the next block. Faggot, Manny’s voice said in my head. Padre Costa had been over to our house two nights in a row. He threatened to shut things down. I closed my eyes and willed him to make it happen, to make my father hand over the lapa. If I squeezed my eyes tighter, harder, Adam appeared, a great big grin travelling across his face as he rolled his bundle buggy along the alley. You can do this. Just one more time. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Just one more time. I stood naked in front of the full-length mirror that hung behind my bedroom door. My body was covered with red dots the size of fleas. They were itching and I scratched my stomach and my arms until they had become hot. It started happening after I passed out in the garage. I thought of telling my mother because it would be a good reason to get me out of performing. I knew it would work, but then I’d hate to think of how my father would blame my mother—how he might think I was a sissy for going to her and complaining about a silly heat rash. The thought of having my costume touch my skin made it worse.

  Underwear, then pants. I bristled when I picked up the starched white shirt from behind the chair. My skin felt hot. My throat burned. “Antonio!” my mother called. I could hear the concern stuck to her voice. I wanted her to come up, sit on my bed, and tell me to think of the nicest place in the world, and to imagine myself there. Like she used to. I put my arms in the shirtsleeves and then flung the cape around my shoulders.

  “Antonio!”

  Coming, I mouthed.

  The crowds weren’t thinning out. I was sure three hours had passed when a woman wheeled the boy up to me. “My son. Nelson,” she said. The boy was around my age. He had an egg-shaped head and a tuft of tangled black hair. His mouth was open and all I saw were teeth. His limbs were thin and stringy and his body was bent the weird way you could bend a pipe cleaner. It looked like he was straining his neck, his head lolled to the side, almost off the leather backing of the chair. His mother held a rag to his drooling mouth.

  “I had four girls before I get pregnant with Nelson. The day they take me to the hospital my husband tell me to make sure is a boy or else no come home.” I could tell she was embarrassed about speaking English. I heard grumbling calls to speed things up. “I bring our son home. My husband is happy. A son! But I know everything is not right, not like my other kids. My husband no want to hear anything from me. He say I was a louca—crazy woman. My son is weak. He no take care of himself. I see he is not like other boys. Not strong. My husband see this too. My husband say is better for us to finish him.” She heaved. Nelson tilted his head up to the rafters as if gulping for air. Again she wiped the drool from his chin. The crowd lowered their eyes and turned silent. It dawned on me what finish him meant. I tried hard to freeze my face, hide my fear. I turned to my father, the tears welling in my eyes. There was nothing I could say or do. It was all a lie.

  “Help him, pelo o amor de Deus, you can help my son.”

  “I can’t,” I said.

  My father climbed the steps onto the stage and stood beside me.

  “I can’t,” I said. “Please, Pai, I can’t.”

  The woman reached for my face. She dabbed the tears from my eyes and cheeks. She brought the handkerchief down and stuffed it in her son’s shirt, rubbing it on his back. It was hard to breathe. Bursts of air squeezed through my sandpaper throat. I fumbled with the knot of the cape, gave in and tore at it as a warm trickle of pee ran do
wn my inner thigh. The snapped tinsel powdered the air with sparkles. The crowd broke into song, Alleluia, Alleluia.

  I had recovered from scarlet fever. My mother blamed my father, said it was brought on by exhaustion. A week of rest was all I needed, my father said.

  His wine press had been assembled where my chair had stood. The rest of the garage remained the same. In a matter of hours my father could have the whole damn thing running again. The sweet smell of grape juice filled the garage. It was the smell that reminded me that winter was on its way. We were late this year. My father had bought the last thirty crates of grapes, and according to my uncles, he had waited too long—too mushy, they said. It was my job to remove the nails and staples from the empty crates. There was no one around. I saw the hammer lying on the ground. I dragged a stool from the corner and got to work, piling the slats of wood into small bundles that my father would use for tinder when we smoked the chouriço.

  “You is here.” My father entered the garage from the laneway. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and his arms were dark with matted hair, stained purple with grape juice. “You find the hammer okay?” he said. Other than letting me know his sister wouldn’t be coming to stay with us until next summer—the delay, unexplained—few words had been shared between us in the week since the worshippers had been left swaying in disbelief. The last thing I saw was how frightened they looked before I collapsed on the stage. The situation was getting out of hand, and my father was smart enough to know when to let things rest. “This is a ship! I am the captain!” he had argued with my mother that night. My father lit a cigarette and looked at me with one eye through the smoke. He headed to the wine press and torqued the ratchet head a few times. “I’m at your uncle house. I helping them to bury the fig tree.” His voice was soft, almost pleading. I didn’t say anything. “We have to bury it now before the freeze.” I couldn’t face him either. “The lapa’s gone,” he said.

  “What do you mean, gone?” My voice was strong, and it surprised me.

  “Someone come in through the basement window and steal it.”

  “If you’re lying—” I stood up, tall and straight. I couldn’t back down. I waited longer than I needed to, waiting for him to lunge at me. He looked small.

  “Filho, I did it for you.” I stared at the pile of crates and wiped my nose and eyes. He cranked the large metal bar of the ratchet, and then he reached down for a jug of last year’s wine and raised it to his lips. He took a deep swig, enough to make the jug gurgle. “Pronto, I go to your uncle’s house now.” He swiped at his mouth with his hand. The drip of grape juice turned into a thin, steady stream that pissed into the bucket.

  I travelled up the lane straddling the thin river of watered-down wine. It looked like our houses were bleeding. Red ran down the spine of the lane, all the way to its ass. That’s what we called it—where the sewer was at the bottom of the lane close by my uncle David’s garage. Senhor Anselmo was hosing down his garage after making wine. So were Senhor Rodrigo and Senhor Benjamin. They acknowledged me by tilting their hats as I walked by.

  Once on Markham Street, I beelined to Mr. Serjeant’s house. I walked along the narrow stretch at the side of his house through to his backyard. I opened the door that led into his garage. James stood facing his canvas, a gallon of paint in his hand. Agnes sat on her rocking chair and smiled. A Swanson’s TV dinner balanced on her lap.

  “Are you feeling better, Antonio? Would you like something to eat?” Agnes said. Her face and arms had plumped up. I tried to avoid looking at her belly. James looked at me for a second before turning back to his painting.

  “No, thanks.”

  I noticed Mr. Serjeant’s trunk was opened. Its brass lock had been broken off. The rim of the chest was covered in ruffled fabric and the inside was lined with quilted material, a balloon print. There was a small yellow blanket folded neatly in the bottom beside a tiny pillow.

  “It’s early, I know,” Agnes said. “I like yellow. And the baby will like the balloons.”

  “It’s pretty,” I said. Pretty sounded like the wrong word—a girl word. There was something creepy about a crib with a lid. “My mother says it’s bad luck to prepare anything before a baby is born. She told me that when I was born she let me sleep in a drawer in her bedroom, just for a couple of days, until my father could set up the crib.” I could tell from the look on Agnes’s face that it didn’t come out the way I wanted. I turned to James, who kept painting. He swung the tin of paint a bit and then splattered the canvas in the same way that Padre Costa blessed the congregation with holy water.

  “It’s over,” I said.

  Still James did not turn around. He put down the tin of paint. He smudged the paint in swirls on the canvas. “Your aunt says that dreams and nightmares are like cleaning out the trash. You wake up with a fresh mind.” He stopped to light a cigarette. “No worries. No troubles.”

  I heard creaking and saw Agnes climbing up the ladder, her belly rubbing against each rung before she disappeared into the loft.

  “Painting does the same thing,” James said, blowing smoke out his nostrils. He faced me now, his curls fighting their way out from underneath his painter’s cap. “Edite’s a good lady. She doesn’t judge.” He reached for the rag dangling from the loop in his jeans and wiped his hands, picking at the webbing between his fingers.

  “Does she know what you do?” I asked, lowering my voice.

  “I’m not a faggot, if that’s what you’re thinking. It means nothing. You’re not a kid anymore, Antonio. There’s lots of stuff in this world that ain’t pretty.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you?” James said. “Look, Edite helps us out a bit, that’s all.”

  “And what does she get from you?”

  “I fill her in on what’s going on downtown. I give her information.”

  “About the murderers?”

  “Something like that. She’s working on a story in the lead-up to the trial.”

  “There’s nothing about the trial in the papers or on TV anymore.”

  “Wait until the trial begins. But Edite’s not really interested in the trial. She’s investigating another kind of story.”

  I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t want him to think Edite kept secrets from me. I was mad that she didn’t trust me enough to tell me what she was really working on, though.

  “She’s interested in what makes people tick,” James said. “Edite’s brave, you know. She’s more interested in how Emanuel’s murder has affected the gay community, how they’ve all been made out to look like animals. It’s the kind of story most reporters are afraid to tell.”

  James came closer to me, placed one hand on my shoulder. His hand was hot. I shook it off. “The world is full of monsters,” he whispered. He put his hand on me again. This time his fingers dug in. “I’m not one of them. I look after you guys.” He let the cigarette butt slip from his fingers and drop to the floor. He spread his arms wide, as if daring me to take a step back. I was ready to push him away, punch him if I needed to.

  “The limpet’s gone,” I said. James’s face betrayed nothing. “Did you steal it?”

  James looked stunned for a second, but then I thought I saw something, the tiniest flinch, the quickest blink. It was him; he had put an end to it. My mother and Edite had made promises, but it was James who had saved me. I took in his smell of tobacco, sweat, and turpentine. I pressed my lips to his chest, but pulled away at the sound of the garage door opening.

  “You should see them,” Ricky said, slipping under the door like a crab. “I’ve never seen Manny in a suit. I followed them all the way to the door.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said.

  “They were going to meet Lygia’s parents to talk about Eugene and her getting married.”

  James flicked a switch and the disco ball started turning. “Isn’t that the way you Portuguese people do it? Meet before a marriage is set?”

  Climbing down the ladder, Agnes slipped on a
rung but regained her balance.

  Near the basin at the rear of the garage James stripped down to his waist. He splashed water on his chest and under his arms, dragged a face cloth he had patted with soap along his skin. Droplets of water splashed onto the baseboard heater coils and sizzled. Agnes turned away as he unzipped his jeans and reached down into his groin to clean with the cloth. I watched from the corner of my eye. James caught me looking. He reached for a towel and tossed it over his shoulder. He placed his hand on his belt buckle. Ricky turned to face the garage wall.

  “I’ve got to get dressed,” James said. “You mind?” I could feel my dick getting hard. I turned around and stood next to Ricky.

  The bulge pressed against my jeans. I tried imagining starving kids in Africa with their bubble bellies and the flies that swarmed around their mouths, and what things would be like if my parents were killed in a car accident and I was left alone to live with my sister. And then my grandmother, waxy and scrawny, lying in her coffin. Anything to force my dick to go limp.

  “You can turn around now,” James said. “Don’t you have to be somewhere, Ricky?”

  “I almost forgot. I’ll go now,” Ricky said.

  “Everything going okay?” James asked. Ricky nodded and left. Agnes reached up behind her, and without looking at James, she rested her hand on his chest.

  “Antonio?” James said, as I zipped up my coat and tugged it down as far as I could. “Follow Ricky to Red’s. Just stand back and keep an eye out for him. Don’t let him see you,” he added. “Will you do that for me?”

  “Sure,” I said, before dipping under the garage door. I figured Ricky was just dropping off the rent or some money to cover the electricity bills. Red lived all alone in a big brick house on Markham Street, three storeys high and just a few houses down from Ricky and Edite. I climbed over Red’s fence. He had a lawn, not a vegetable garden. A bluish light from a television shone from the basement window. I crouched down, off to the side of the house. I saw an elongated shadow, which shrunk and then turned into Red as he came into view. He was probably twenty feet away from me. He walked over to an easy chair, the kind with a handle on the side, reclined, and a footrest magically appeared. He had a beer in his hand. His flaming red hair turned a strange colour in the television’s light. Ricky walked by him. He carried what looked like a roll of toilet paper and a bottle and placed them on the floor beside Red. Red plunked his beer bottle on an angle between his legs. He loosened the knot of his robe before lifting the cable box from the floor and resting it on his knee. The long wire that stretched to the TV was tangled under his feet. Ricky positioned a small stool in front of Red’s recliner. He sat on it facing him, between his spread legs.