Six Metres of Pavement

by Farzana Doctor

  He looked blankly at the white page of his notebook while Fatima continued her stare-down. He shifted his gaze out the window at the grey March sky. Soon, his mind travelled through its thin panes and traversed the neglected campus soccer fields. It passed Chinatown, then Little Italy and Little Portugal, and finally settled in his neighbourhood, on his street. His mind hovered there, and waited until Celia stepped out from her front door. She wiped her hands on her black apron, scanned the skies, and waved up to him.

  “There! You’re thinking about someone. I can see it in your face!” Fatima said, interrupting his reverie.

  “No, no, it’s nothing. I wasn’t thinking about anyone in particular. I was just letting my mind wander,” he said, waving his hands in the air in protest.

  “You’re lying, dude. I can tell. I saw it. All of a sudden your face softened, you smiled …”

  Ismail couldn’t help but grin at her wide-eyed expression.

  “Fine. There is someone I’m a little bit curious about. Someone I’ve been thinking about, but I don’t know if I want to write about them. And maybe it wouldn’t be appropriate. I barely know this person.”

  “Ah, I get it. You’re interested in this person,” Fatima smirked, leaning forward in her chair. Ismail felt himself tense; there was nothing smirkable happening between Celia and himself and he didn’t like Fatima’s insinuation. He crossed his arms over his chest, but his thoughts returned to Celia.

  “Oh, come on. Tell me about this mystery person. Please? Is it a man or woman?”

  “Er, a woman,” he admitted. An almost imperceptible look of confusion crossed Fatima’s face. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “No, no. It’s nothing.… Tell me about her.”

  And then, although he never expected to talk this way to a teenager, he recounted their brief encounters, sightings, small talk, and what seemed to him like mutual curiosity. Speaking it all aloud, he realized he did have much to say. He and the widow already had a kind of story together.

  “Huh. I’d say you have someone to write about. I’ll be very curious to know how this all turns out. So, is she cute?”

  “Fatima, come on, it not like that. Besides, I’m an old guy. I can’t talk about this with you,” he said, growing uncomfortable again. “How about we talk about your writing? We only have a few minutes left, so let’s get to what you’re writing about.”

  “Okay … well, I continued from where I left off, you know, the thing I read last week?” Ismail barely remembered her piece, but nodded, anyway. “So the class told me to do more research and get more information, right? And so I called up my parents to get some more details, but, well, that didn’t work out so well.”

  “Why, what happened?”

  “It’s a long story, Ismail….We don’t get along very well. Never have. But it’s been worse recently … I wish I could just afford to move out,” she said, examining a lock of her hair and squirming in her seat. Fatima suddenly resembled the teenager she truly was.

  “Did … something happen?” he asked, tentatively.

  “It’s just that my parents are, well, kind of traditional, old-school. You know they’re older … like your age.” She looked up at him, raised her eyebrows. “No offence.”

  “Have you had a disagreement with them?” Ismail asked, his uncleji voice slipping out, the one he reserved for Nabil’s boys.

  “That’s an understatement. But look, I can’t get into it now,” she said firmly.

  “Well, all right,” Ismail replied, surprised to be feeling cheated by her guardedness. An awkward pause floated in the air between them. After a moment, Ismail recovered, “Well, have you thought about another way to do some research on their experiences? I mean, your piece is going to be fictional. And like you just said to me, maybe you don’t need to know everything about your parents to write characters based on them. You can weave in some typical immigrant experiences into your story.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” she said, sighing. “Looks like I’ll need to do that. But I’m disappointed. I sort of wanted to know more about them. Not just for the story, you know? I really wanted to know more about their lives.” She fluttered her eyelashes down and stared at her lap.

  “Maybe things will change? The tensions will clear and then you can talk to them.”

  “Doubt it.” She slouched deeper into her chair, and pouted in that bored way that only young women can pull off. “Anyway, I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  Ismail watched her for a minute, unsure of what to say. She picked up her pen, and doodled in her notebook. He pretended to make notes until James interrupted them again.

  “All right everyone. Now work for ten minutes on your own. Take what you discussed and write a character sketch based on your character’s motivations, desires, deepest wants.” He held up his watch. “Ten minutes … and start … now!” Ismail gazed tiredly at his teacher’s keen expression. James’s roving eyes locked on his, and so he turned back to his notebook.

  He pondered Celia, the widow he barely knew anything about. What were her motivations, her desires, her deepest wants? To live peacefully with her daughter, to buy a new polyester dress next week? To see her grandson grow up?

  He glanced at Fatima, who frowned at him, and then resumed her fast scribbling, her pen making furious scratching sounds against the page. All those around him seemed to be engaged in industrious writing: James Busbridge chalked something on the board; the older woman with the flowered dress to his left printed slowly and methodically in pencil, stopping periodically to erase something and then blowing away the eraser bits; the two thirty-somethings tapped away on their matching green laptops. Everyone, busy writing. Except him. Finally, he picked up his ball point and in one long rush of ink he wrote:

  The widow across the street is an enigma to me. And yet, she is so very familiar, in a way. We co-exist, almost co-habitating, a six metre stretch of pavement the dividing line between us. We’re waiting for the other to cross the road.

  All too soon, James yelled, “Time’s up!” and then pointed his students to some keywords he’d written on the board about character development. Ismail turned a brand new page, abandoning the paragraph he’d just written. He took copious notes on James’s lecture, finding a certain satisfaction in filling his white notebook page with more than empty thoughts. He caught Fatima watching him when he looked her way once or twice, but didn’t pay much attention. Then, class ended, and the other students packed up their books and laptops and shrugged on winter coats. Fatima remained in her seat, rereading her writing. After a moment, she ripped a page out of her book and carefully folded it into quarters. She clasped it in her hand a moment, her eyes dancing between it and Ismail, back and forth, in a way at made Ismail tense without knowing why. Finally, she stuffed the folded paper into her bag, grabbed her coat, pushed past him, and mumbled a goodbye.

  Ismail shuffled two pages back through his notebook and found the paragraph he’d written about Celia. He reread it, lingering on the words once, twice, thrice. Like Fatima, he, too, had an urge to rip out his page, and fold it into neat quarters.

  — 20 —

  Laundry

  The beginning of March was strangely warm that year, with temperatures reaching the low ’teens for two lucky days. It was all anyone talked about and weathermen became minor celebrities as Torontonians tuned in just to watch them announce the good news. Global warming was suspected to be the cause of the weather anomaly, and every reactive journalist was suddenly interested in stories about “going green.”

  Celia’s agonias weren’t allowing her to appreciate the good weather. After dropping Marco off at preschool, she sat alone at her window, alternating between listlessness and restlessness. It was quiet already by nine in the morning; all of the productive people had driven away in their cars or caught buses to reach import
ant destinations. What would she do today to be a useful human being? She considered starting dinner, perhaps chopping the vegetables, making some rice, marinating beef. A man pedalled past on a bicycle. A delivery van drove by, going the wrong way down the one-way street.

  Drowsy, she allowed her eyes to close, felt wetness against her lashes. Then, she felt nothing.

  She was dreaming of José again. He was there with her, standing at the opposite end of the living room. She sized him up warily, taking in his familiar salt-and-pepper hair, beard shadow, and pot belly, but he came and sat down beside her, anyway. He rested his strong hand on her thigh, and she grimaced. Ignoring her, he leaned over and kissed her. She resisted him at first, pleading, “No José, you’re making this too hard for me. You aren’t supposed to be here. You have to let me go.” He shrugged and flashed her a toothy grin that deepened the laugh lines around his eyes, reminding her of the cocky young man he once was.

  She gave in to her loneliness and longing, and kissed him back, feeling first his soft top lip, and then his rougher, chapped bottom one. She got a taste of his tongue, and wanted more.

  Twenty-two minutes later, she awoke with a start. He was gone again. She sniffed the air and the couch: drywall dust and sweat and figs. A contamination of drywall dust and sweat and figs.

  She hurried to the kitchen sink and scrubbed her face clean. And then her arms and forearms. But it wasn’t enough. She stripped off her dress, put on a clean one. She tossed the dress into her hamper, and still his scent lingered. She hefted the hamper to the basement, emptied the whole lot into the washer without separating the darks from lights, added too much detergent, turned the dial, exhaled. Finally, he seemed to be gone. She climbed the stairs, and noticed, for the first time that day, or maybe even that week, the sun shining brightly through the kitchen window. She gazed into it, allowing herself to be impressed by the simple, heady stream of light. She stood in its rays and let its heat burn off the last of the fog left by her dream.

  She dampened a cloth, feeling cool water trickle between her fingers and went outside to clean the winter’s grime from the laundry line. With one hand, she held her washcloth over the cord and then pulled it through with the other. The line danced and shook under her touch. Later, when the wash was done, she hung it up, the first air-dried load of the year. Then, she waited for the wind to do its work.

  — * —

  The big thaw meant that Ismail’s department would likely come in below their snow-clearing budget, the weather doing the work of dozens of staff and machines. His boss, a man who enjoyed being in the black, had come to Ismail in a celebratory mood that Friday afternoon, congratulating Ismail for the favourable budget lines he’d submitted earlier that day, as if Ismail were somehow personally responsible for the warm temperatures. In a rare show of generosity, he announced that anyone without a pending deadline could start the weekend early. A few grumbles emerged from cubicles near Ismail’s, colleagues still working on year-end reports. Ismail checked his watch and saw that it was already two-thirty. He accepted the two-hour gift and left for home along with a few co-workers pleased to not have any pressing work to do.

  He found a choice parking spot on Lochrie, just across from his house. He stood in the middle of the road, unbuttoned his jacket, and enjoyed the fourteen degrees of warmth the winter sun offered. He admired a few green stalks peeking out of the thawing soil in his next door neighbour’s yard and estimated that they would soon push up bright purple flowers if the weather kept up. If not, they would likely suffer for their premature awakenings, wilting before having the chance to bloom. Ismail plucked up a sodden plastic bag that had blown into his rose bushes, envisioning the flowers that would soon emerge from their desolate, woody branches.

  Across the street, a clothesline squeaked. A sack dress, two black sweaters, and three pairs of tights fluttered in the breeze, beckoning from around the side of Celia’s place. Breaking up the dark laundry were a few pairs of white underwear, hung by their droopy waistbands. Ismail leaned to his right to look further around the side of the house and smiled at the scandal of an orange bra nestled amongst the mourning clothes.

  There was another squeak and the line jerked to the left. Although he couldn’t see Celia from where he stood, the twitching line told him of her presence. He envisioned her reaching up and tugging pieces of clothing off. In the pauses between the squeaks, he guessed she was folding, her hands caressing the fabric, and piling each dress, sweater, and undergarment into a basket. While he pondered whether he should walk between the houses and speak to Celia, a dark cloud obscured the sun’s rays and the sky darkened. Eventually, the last pair of black tights vanished, and he heard a door slam as the widow went indoors. A slow rain shower began, dripping down his forehead and onto his cheeks.

  — 21 —

  Consolation

  Predictably, Ismail found Fatima smoking on the steps outside University College the next Tuesday before class.

  “Hi, Fatima.” He fumbled with the change in his pocket, remembering her upset the week before. He considered asking her how things were going with her parents, but thought better of the idea. “So, how’s your story coming along?” he asked instead.

  “Fine, I guess.” She frowned, and flicked ash off her cigarette. Ismail saw a raw vulnerability just beneath her tough-smoking-girl posture, and this prodded him to linger at the steps awhile longer.

  “So …” he exhaled, “were you finally able to interview your parents?”

  “Nope.” He let the matter drop. Janice, the older pencil-toting student, passed by. Ismail nodded to her as she headed up the steps.

  “That’s too bad. I’m sorry to hear it. Hopefully they will come around.” He held onto the handrail and climbed a couple of steps.

  “Doubt it.” She took a final drag of her cigarette and then stubbed it out angrily. “Our communication has pretty much broken down. They kicked me out of the house.” She looked away, in the direction of the soccer fields.

  “What? Oh. That … must be difficult.” He looked at Fatima more closely, noticing the dark wells beneath her eyes. Beside her sat a large backpack, stuffed to its bulging seams.

  “You want to know why?” She stood up, hands on her waist, as though issuing some kind of challenge.

  “Um … all right.”

  “Well, I might as well say it. I don’t care what they or anyone thinks, anyway.” Ismail gathered that “anyone” included him. He held his breath in the silence that followed. Then, she looked down at her hands and her tone softened. “Well, it’s complicated, really. It’s for a bunch of reasons. It’s not like I’ve done anything really terrible … it’s because of the article I wrote for The Varsity. I never thought they’d see it.… Did you see it?”

  He shook his head and she dug into her pack and handed Ismail the newspaper.

  The headline read: Beyond Bisexual: a Queer Girl’s Take on LGBT. He scanned the first three paragraphs, in which Fatima discussed the “fluidity of sexuality” and “the limitations of the gender binary on notions of sexual orientation.” Ismail understood little of it, and tried to recall what’s he’d learned about bisexuals from the first of the library books he’d borrowed to impress Daphne. He felt Fatima’s gaze upon him and so he searched his mind for an appropriate response.

  “Oh. I see.” He’d discussed a variety of intimacies with Daphne after their Hope for Today meetings, but he’d never talked about such matters with a young person before. His sweating commenced.

  “Yup, it isn’t what they expected of me, you know? They were shocked that I was even having sex with guys, never mind anyone else.”

  “Well,” Ismail mumbled, clearing his throat, “this is a … difficult situation … I’m sorry.” He looked around to see if anyone had heard her say “sex.”

  “We’d better go inside. We’re going to be late,” she said, and he breathed a sigh
of relief when she brushed past him and up the stairs.

  Fatima was silent and aloof for most of the class, avoiding Ismail’s glances. He was glad James didn’t assign an in-class pairs exercise that week; most weeks, the students claimed the same seats and paired-up with the same students, and Fatima had become Ismail’s de facto writing partner. During the lesson, he snuck glimpses of her brooding figure; she’d pulled off her boots and was hugging her knees to her chest, scratching away in her notebook. He mentally reviewed their brief conversation multiple times and assessed his clumsy responses. He hoped she wouldn’t want to resume the discussion over the break or at the end of the class. To avoid such a situation, Ismail vacated the classroom during break-time, spending its duration in the men’s washroom. When class ended, he packed up his things and left quickly, pausing only briefly to wave goodbye to her.

  Ismail headed south on King’s College Circle toward College Street. The dim, turn-of-the-century lampposts cast a yellow glow on the narrow road. Up ahead, in contrast, a restaurant sign on the main street shone neon bright. A streetcar trundled past. A moment later, Fatima caught up with him.

  “Ismail! Hey, wait up!” He winced at the sound of her voice. Looking back, he saw that she had traversed the thawing soccer field as a shortcut. Thick brown mud coated her boots.

  “Oh. Hello, Fatima.” He slowed until she was walking beside him.

  “Ismail, sorry for laying all that on you before class. I guess all this stuff is weighing me down and I just blurted it all out. I didn’t really plan to tell you all that,” she said apologetically. He thought he also heard a tinge of embarrassment in her voice. Maybe she did care what “anyone” thought of her after all.

  “It’s okay, Fatima. You didn’t make me feel uncomfortable,” he said, contorting his face into neutrality. For good measure he added, “and I want you to know that I don’t … er … judge you … for your … preferences.” Was that the right word? Preference? Ismail scanned his memory of the glossary he’d read in When Someone You Love Comes Out of the Closet.