Cycling to Asylum

by Su J. Sokol

  “What are you saying? Like move here?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t wanna move, Mommy.” I drop my chopsticks onto my plate. Mommy’s hands are squeezed between her knees and I see that she’s hardly eaten any of her supper. “You’re not serious, are you? We … we can’t move!”

  “Siri—”

  “And why are we first talking about this now? Why did we leave from camp instead of going home first? When someone moves they, like, pack. And say good-bye to their friends and … We can’t just stay here! We need to go home first, discuss it.”

  “Sweetheart, I understand your confusion. We couldn’t do things in the normal way. We had to do this fast and in secret.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Daddy was in trouble. With the government.”

  “I don’t believe you. What did he do?”

  “He didn’t do anything. I mean, anything wrong.”

  “Then why?”

  Mommy looks around at the other people in the restaurant, then leans across the table to speak more quietly. “It’s political. You know that Daddy and I don’t agree with the U.S. government. That’s why we go to demos and participate in other … in other stuff.”

  “Yeah, so what? Other people do that and they’re not moving away.” I don’t bother to lower my voice. People are laughing and speaking French and shovelling in their sushi. No one’s paying any attention to us. I feel totally alone, even though there are people all around.

  “Daddy’s done more than just go to demos. When he was younger, before we met, he did other things. The people who did these other things, the government may be looking for them.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Nothing bad.”

  “How do you know if you weren’t even there? If the government is after him, maybe he did do something wrong.”

  “Your Daddy would never do anything bad, you know that. I can’t give you all of the details, though. You just need to trust us.”

  “Trust you? After you lied to me?” Then I wonder about something else. “Does Simon know?”

  “Daddy’s having the same conversation with him that I’m having with you right now.”

  “Why aren’t we having this conversation all together?”

  “Siri, this has been extremely hard on your daddy and I knew how upset you’d be …”

  “Why are you protecting him? This is all his fault, isn’t it? Because he did some crazy, freaky thing and now he’s in trouble with the government.”

  “Honey … a person has to stand up for what he or she believes is right.”

  “And this is right? To take me away from my friends? To ruin my life? ” I can’t believe this is happening to me. I have to go back home. I have to see Michael. We didn’t even get to talk about what happened. I stand up. “Well fuck that!

  “Siri!” Mommy yells, sounding shocked.

  “You’re ruining my whole life and you’re mad that I said ’fuck’ in a restaurant? Well, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK!” I say, standing up.

  Everybody’s looking at us now, but I don’t care. I don’t want to see any of these people ever again, anyway. I run out of the restaurant and down the street but I can’t really go anywhere. I don’t know this city and I don’t speak French. I stop and lean against a building. I feel weird, dizzy and like something inside of me is beating a loud, angry drum. Some people look like they’re about to come over and ask me if everything’s OK. Why can’t they mind their own business? If I were in New York, no one would bother me. I turn away from them and start walking back up the block. Maybe I can talk Mommy out of this crazy idea. I see her through the front window glass, standing up near our table, pulling bills out of her wallet and throwing them down on the table. She looks at them like they’re random bills, like she doesn’t know or care how much they’re worth. And she wants to live here? She comes out, looking around for me frantically. I take a deep breath and try to act calm and logical.

  “Mommy, please, you can’t mean it. We need to go home. Talk this over. There must be something else we can do. Can’t you get Daddy a lawyer or something?”

  “I’m not sure it would help.”

  “What did he do?” Mommy doesn’t answer me. I try another question. “What do Grandma and Grandpa say? Do they even know?”

  “Yes. They’re going to help. To try to bring some of our things over little by little.”

  Somehow, the fact that Grandma and Grandpa know makes this all more horribly real. It’s not just some nightmare I’m gonna wake up from.

  “Mommy, you can’t do this to me. Please!”

  “Sweetheart … We don’t have a choice.”

  “We could go back, talk this over with your friends. Do Michael’s parents know?”

  “No.”

  “But they’re your friends!”

  “We couldn’t tell anyone. It wasn’t safe.”

  “You’re choosing Daddy over us, that’s what you’re doing.”

  “No, don’t look at it like that.”

  “Why not? This is all his fault and you’re sticking up for him. Why couldn’t I have had normal parents? You don’t care about us at all, otherwise you wouldn’t do these crazy things. Otherwise you wouldn’t be ruining my life!”

  “You’re wrong. We’re trying to give you a better life. That’s what this is about. The politics, everything.”

  “By taking me away from all my friends?”

  “Sweetheart, you’ll make new friends. And you can keep in touch with the old ones.”

  “Can I go back soon, visit them?’

  Mommy doesn’t say anything right away. Just looks at me sadly. “No, my love. I’m sorry. We’ve applied for political asylum. That means we’re saying it’s not safe to go back. And it isn’t. We’ll have to wait this out and see what happens.”

  I just look at her. I can’t believe it. Not go back home? Not go back to my school, my friends, Michael? They planned this whole thing and didn’t say one word to me, never asked me what I thought. They didn’t even warn me so I could say good-bye. I feel like I just fell into a big, black hole. No, that my parents pushed me into one.

  “I will never, ever forgive you for this.”

  “Siri …”

  Mommy tries to hug me, but I push her away. “Never!” I scream.

  I cry the whole way back to the hotel. I only stop when we get to the lobby. I don’t want people I already know to see me crying. I run up the stairs and into my room. Simon isn’t back yet. I see my camp duffel, open it and put my face inside. It smells of grass, the camp laundry and baseball. And the end of summer. I just want to climb in and mail myself home.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Simon

  “I’m not five years old,” Siri says, “and I don’t need anyone to bring me to school.”

  She pushes her eggs around with her fork. I take another huge bite of my chocolate banana crepe. Maybe if Siri would’ve gotten one too, she’d be less grumpy.

  “It’s your first day at a new school. You don’t know the neighbourhood,” Daddy says.

  “And whose fault is that?” Siri yells.

  Daddy puts his fork down beside his blueberry crepe. “There’s no use arguing about it.”

  “Yeah, I know you think I should have no say in my own life. Otherwise you wouldn’t have kidnapped me away from my friends and sent me to school in French.”

  “Siri, Daddy’s just trying to help. He knows high schools,” Mommy says.

  “Daddy being there will only make things worse.”

  “The letter from the school encouraged parents to come on the first day. Right, Laek?”

  “Yeah,” Daddy says, lifting his fork up and putting it down again.

  “Daddy,” I ask. “Can I have the rest of your crepe if you’re not going to eat it?”

  “Sure, Simon. Go for it.”

  Siri leaves for school before me. Daddy follows a few steps behind her, looking as sad as Henry’s dog when Henry pushes him away.
I wonder how Henry’s first day of school will be. I’m a little scared about going to a new school. I don’t know anybody or where anything is. What if I have to go to the bathroom and can’t find it? What if everyone teases me because I can’t speak French?

  After I finish Daddy’s crepe, Mommy and I walk down the big hill on St-Denis to the métro. I’m glad Mommy’s coming with me to school. I zigzag down the block on a pretend magna board. In my backpack, I have my lunch, a student pass for the métro and a shiny new screen, just for school, with hyper-good tech. I pass about a gazillion spicy-smelling restaurants and one spicy-smelling store with a picture of a big, green leaf in the window.

  The Berri-UQAM station has way more air than the subway stations I know in New York. In the middle of the station is a big, round bench where you can sit and watch everyone come in and out. There’s art everywhere and musicians too. Right now there’s someone playing an instrument I’ve never seen before under a big, silver holo of a harp. I watch an old woman give a coin to a little boy. He runs over to toss the money into the musician’s big, round velvet hat.

  On the platform, the train going the other way comes first. I listen for the special Montréal train music. Ba Da Daaa!

  “What is that music, Mommy?”

  “It sounds like the first few notes of the song ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’—an old piece of music by a famous musician named Aaron Copland.”

  “Why does the train play it?”

  “I read about this. The music is to warn people when the doors are closing. But the more interesting question is, why that music? It turns out that in the old days, the train’s motor used to make those sounds when it revved up.”

  “All by itself? A train making music?”

  “Yep.”

  “Hyper!”

  Now our train is pulling in too. The doors open and people come pouring out. We wait on the platform, not like in New York, where everyone starts pushing in right away. I’m still thinking about the type of train that can play music by itself when suddenly I know. A magic train.

  Inside the train are vines with pink and orange and purple leaves winding around the poles and seats, but the poles have turned into trees filled with small, rainbow-coloured frogs and birds. There are monkeys too, and a waterfall, and a stream of bluish-white water rushing along the floor of the train right over our toes, only we’re not getting wet from it. In the background, pixie music is playing, all sparkly like the sounds of stardust, and I also hear the monkeys making little sounds, and that’s like music too, that and the gurgly sound of the stream and the fast sound of the waterfall. One monkey grabs a banana from a tree and offers it to me. I look at Mommy. She laughs, so I reach for the banana. My hand passes right through the holo, of course, but that’s OK. I had enough bananas in my crepes this morning.

  When we get to the school, I have to say good-bye to Mommy at the front door. A man wearing a big, red clown nose brings me to my class. Another teacher in the hallway is wearing a sorcerer’s hat. And then, when I get to my classroom, my teacher has face paint on that makes her look like a leopard. Is today Halloween in Canada or something? Or maybe in Québec. Daddy told me that Québec has some holidays that Canada doesn’t.

  I’m in a special class called the “classe d’accueil,” the welcome class. Maybe this is the way they welcome people here, by dressing weird. But I like that my teacher looks like a leopard. It’s serendipitous, since I’m Panther in the Bicycling Family stories. I wonder how to say “serendipitous” in French. I don’t know how to say hardly anything. I feel so stupid.

  We go around the room and each of us says where we’re from and what language we speak. Some of the kids can speak two or even three languages. I say “anglais” and then add “espagnol.” I don’t know a lot of Spanish, but I feel embarrassed to say I only know English.

  The teacher is named Madame Nathalie and she speaks to us in French. Daddy says this is the best way to learn. I guess she doesn’t have a choice anyway, since everyone in the class speaks something different. She can’t be expected to know every single language! So we’ll all learn French and then there’ll be one language we can speak together.

  During the morning, I try to listen carefully. Some of the words sound like English words but some don’t, and with them, I try to imagine my magic translation glasses turning them into English. It helps when Madame Nathalie puts words on the big screen and acts them out. After a while, though, my brain feels really tired, like when I sneak out of my room in the middle of the night to play my sim game and Mommy doesn’t catch me until the morning. I decide that instead of translation glasses, I’ll imagine Madame Nathalie beaming what she means directly into my brain. I hope my brain will turn bilingual soon. I don’t like feeling so dumb.

  In the afternoon, we do math. Madame Nathalie comes over to help me. She says my name like “Sea–mo,” not pronouncing the “n” at the end, but it’s like you know it’s there anyway. She’s showing me all kinds of different stuff about how things with numbers are done here. Like for temperature, I need to learn it in degrés Celsius instead of Fahrenheit. And to weigh in kilos, not pounds. Distance is kilometres, not miles, which I already know from our bike trip. I even need to learn to tell time all over again, using a 24-hour clock. Right now it’s 13h24, not 1:24. And money, of course. This is French money. No wait, it’s Canadian money, but the French way to tell the time. Sometimes I get confused between what’s different because it’s Canada and what’s different because it’s Québec and in French.

  I finish all the problems Madame Nathalie has given me. I look up and she comes over.

  “Est-ce que tu as une question, Simon? Une question?” she asks slowly.

  No, not a question, but I don’t know how to say this whole sentence.

  “Non question. Fini!” I say, pointing to my screen.

  “Ah, tu as terminé! Bravo! Tu es rapide!”

  Yeah, I’m rapid, but now I guess she’ll ask me how I got the answer, and I won’t be able to tell her and she’ll be mad. If I can’t explain it in English, I sure won’t be able to in French. But she doesn’t ask me to “show my work,” just gives me more problems to do. They’re harder ones, but as long as I don’t have to explain how I got my answer, they’re not too hard for me. I think I’m going to like this school, even if Madame Nathalie doesn’t dress up like a leopard every day.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Siri

  On my way to school, I see that same group of kids I’ve seen every day in the skate park since the first week. I can smell what they’re smoking from here. I take a quick sideways look at them. There are some kids from my class and some from higher grades too. I see Gabriel, that boy from Venezuela who’s hyper-hot. He sees me too and motions me over.

  “Tiens,” Gabriel says, handing me a joint. I take it, trying to act like holding a joint is normal for me. He turns and says “Regarde!” to one of the older boys grinding his magna board a few feet away, then drops down and does ten one-handed push-ups. He jumps back up and walks over to the other boy, putting out his hand. The other boy looks annoyed but digs into his pocket and slaps a bill into Gabriel’s palm. Then the same boy walks over to me.

  “Câlisse, donne-moi le spliff. You’re just letting it burn.”

  “Attends!” Gabriel says, then turns to me.“Veux-tu fumer de buzz, Mademoiselle Brooklyn?” He pronounces it “Broo-kleen,” which makes it sound exotic.

  “Sure.” I put it to my lips and pull some smoke into my mouth, only letting a little bit into the back of my throat. The rest I breathe out before handing it to the other boy.

  “Don’t waste good weed on this little girl. She doesn’t even know how to inhale.”

  “Tabarnak!” I say, trying out a swear word I learned. “I know how to inhale. I’m from New York City.” I grab the spliff back and breathe in a lungful of smoke. It burns the back of my throat and I start coughing.

  Gabriel laughs and puts his finger under my chin. He’s about five inch
es taller than me. Most of the kids in my school are bigger than me. Beginning high school with grade seven is such a stupid idea. Some of the boys in my grade haven’t even started their growth spurts yet, and they’re in school with guys who already have moustaches.

  “So little Siri, why does a girl from New York City come to Montréal?”

  I feel like he’s teasing me a little, with the exaggerated way he says “New York City.” My classe d’accueil is all immigrants, but I’m the only one from the United States, though a lot of kids speak English anyway. Since there are more grades in high school than there are classe d’accueils, there are a bunch of kids in my class who are one, two or even three years older than me. I figure Gabriel is at least fifteen. He’s good-looking, with muscles on his arms. I’m surprised he’s interested in talking to me. I better not let him think I’m less tough than he is.

  “I was kidnapped. I had a boyfriend in Brooklyn. They broke us up.”

  “Vraiment? Who kidnapped you?”

  “Mostly my father. He’s a criminal, wanted by the government. He dragged me and my little brother here so he can hide out in Montréal. I don’t even think he uses his real name. His first name, I think it’s made up. And he uses my mom’s last name.”

  Why am I saying this stuff? I can’t seem to shut up. Suddenly I feel hyper-paranoid. I stop myself from blabbing more by spitting on the ground.

  “Do you have any gum?” I ask. “Wait, I do.” I take a pack of gum out from my backpack and offer it around before shoving a piece into my own mouth.

  “You’re OK, little Siri. Don’t worry. I can protect you from your father. Regarde!”

  He takes off his shirt. He has tattoos on both his arms. On his right arm, it’s a tattoo of a gun. He makes a muscle and the gun moves a little so you can imagine it firing. On his other arm, he has a tattoo of a string of barbed wire around his biceps. It reminds me of something. Oh yeah, the tattoo on Daddy’s wrist.