‘Touch,’ she says to me, holding out her damp and empty palm.
‘That’s cold,’ I say.
‘Is hot,’ she says. ‘It burns hot.’
‘You’re right, Mother. It does.’
We sit there for a little while longer before she looks at me and smiles.
‘Is so nice to see your face,’ she says.
‘I’m back, Mother. I was gone, but I’m back now.’
‘I always knew you’d be back, dear. I always knew you’d never leave me.’
Four
AT A CRUCIAL AND early point in my life, something seeped into me. (Is that how to explain it?) Some mood or manner was transmitted, though my parents tried their utmost to prevent this from happening. Afterward, things became a bit more complicated. I couldn’t always control the signals that my body gave off. I couldn’t always produce the feelings that were expected of me, or else translate my thoughts into meaningful statements. At the very least, I picked up my parents’ accent, including the inability to pronounce ‘thhh.’ I counted to ‘tree’ instead of ‘three.’ I had a ‘tie’ instead of a ‘thigh.’ To some, I couldn’t ‘think’ at all.
My elementary school teachers treated this very seriously. One day, when the rest of the students in my class were learning their first words, I was summoned by the PA system to the special needs office. The teacher in the office might have been having a bad day because she didn’t seem particularly pleased once she saw me. She immediately instructed me in a slow and loud voice to move my seat closer and to watch her carefully. She leaned forward and with exaggerated gestures squeezed her tongue against her teeth. ‘Thhhhhhh,’ she said in demonstration. ‘Thhhank you. Thhhhhhhhank you.’ Bubbles and flecks of spit blew out of her mouth. I pulled back in my seat, my face scrunching up. It was the most disgusting sound and gesture that an adult had ever made to me.
My reaction was taken to be a clear sign that I wasn’t genuinely interested in improving myself. That my overall attitude to learning was demonstratively poor. The special needs teacher grew impatient at the slowness of my progress, and, later, at the stammer and shyness that inexplicably seemed to emerge. My homeroom teacher grew impatient too, for she obviously had no great desire to repeat the lessons that I had missed. Both made comments at my expense amongst other teachers and in class. Certain students in the playground mimicked these comments when administering ‘nougies’ and ‘Indian burns,’ when reminding me about the neighbourhood nuisance of my mother, or when hurling language about race and wealth. Like my brother, my interest in school began to wane. I might never have even learned to read were it not for the inspiration offered by my brother the poet. But also Miss Cameron.
Miss Cameron wasn’t a teacher at the school. She was a local librarian, a bird-like woman with wrinkled scarves, wiry glasses over green eyes, and a whole lot of nose. She wore striped stockings and badly fitting second-hand dresses, and she was politely shunned by just about everyone in the neighbourhood. For some inexplicable reason, she invited me to the library where she worked for afternoons of tea and pickles, and for some equally inexplicable reason, I accepted.
They weren’t just any tea and pickles. Miss Cameron brewed her own blend of tea for visitors to the library and at home she made pickles of all sorts. She sometimes brought her creations to the library to show me, though there were stern signs throughout the small single-roomed space warning against the consumption of food and presenting the threat of cancelled privileges. Miss Cameron brought in Mason jars with checkered cloth tops packed with asparagus spears or carrots or cucumbers or small golden onions, dill and mustard seeds and whole pieces of garlic swirling in the brine. She herself never enjoyed any of her creations, since she claimed to possess a weak stomach. But she would sometimes open a jar during the many slow days at the library, and allow me to carefully fish out with my fingers a succulently braised onion.
‘Our secret,’ she would say.
Miss Cameron had a passion for local history, something that she desperately hoped to pass on to others. While munching on a pickled carrot, I learned about the Scarborough Bluffs and their geology. I learned about the ‘Toronto Purchase’ of land from three Mississauga chiefs in 1787, but also how no document describing a neighbouring ‘Scarborough Purchase’ has ever come to light. I mostly learned about our community of Port Junction, which was established early in the 1800s when several United Empire Loyalists migrated up from the US to set up the first farming settlements to the east of the fledgling town. Within two short decades, Port Junction would boast its own commercial wharf and ship-building operations, as well as a fishing industry and two hotels. Farmers from the surrounding areas would visit to buy and ship goods. A lucrative night-smuggling network also developed, due in part to the high regional tariffs on goods such as leather, tea, and tobacco, and the lower prices that beckoned from the nation to the south. Things had happened here. It wasn’t just another suburb. It was a place with a past.
‘Your parents’ home, for instance,’ Miss Cameron said. ‘Do you realize just how lucky you are to live in such a home? Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. Have you noticed the joists? The moldings and leaded glass in the attic window? Yours is a very old place. In fact, the property is actually mentioned in one of the earliest surveys of the area. We’re talking the beginning of the 1800s. Of course the house itself would be younger, especially the second storey. Still, you should be on the lookout for relics, young man, especially in the basement. Misplaced books and toys. Diaries hidden behind walls and under floorboards. I’m sure there are many interesting old things lurking about.’
She had discovered many interesting old things of her own, but none more prized than a book that she had found and decided to keep to herself. The book was perhaps over a century and a half old, and it had worn paper covers and brown pages of almost tissue-paper fragility. Our Place, Our Heart was the title. Miss Cameron was obsessively careful about this book. She never allowed it to be checked out, and she only ever let the most trustworthy hold it or turn its fragile pages. Inside was an anonymously edited collection of local poems and songs, including one entitled ‘The Scarborough Settler’s Lament,’ which was at least 150 years old:Awa’ wi’ Canada’s muddy creeks
And Canada’s fields o’ pine
This land o’ wheat is a goodly land
But ach, it isnae mine
The heathy hill, the grassy dale
The daisy-spangled lea
The purlin’ burn and craggy linn
Auld Scotia’s glens gie me
Nae mair I’ll win by Asti’s banks
O’er Pentland’s craggy cone
The days can ne’er come back again
O’ thirty years that’s gone
But fancy oft at midnicht ’oor
Will steal across the sea
Yestre’en I made a pleasant dream
I saw the auld country
Each weel-kempt scene that met my view
Brocht childhood’s days tae mind
A blackbird sang on Toshy Linn
The song he sang lang syne
But like a dream time flies away
Again the morning came
And I awoke in Canada
Three thousand miles frae hame
‘It’s nice,’ I told her. ‘I like it. I like the weirdness of the words. Purlin’ burn, craggy linn.…’
‘Do you understand why I’ve showed you this?’ she asked. ‘He saw himself as a stranger here. He longed deeply for his home-land. ’
When we drifted apart, it wasn’t for any of the reasons you might have supposed. It wasn’t because there couldn’t be a connection between the two of us. It wasn’t because I couldn’t recognize how special Miss Cameron was, or how lonely a woman like her would be in any ‘traditional community’ with little genuine interest in the past. But something loomed between us all the same. Something vague and yet palpable, like a bruise or soreness after a night of fitful dreams.
�
�Of course, we can’t stop here,’ she announced, struggling with a pile of books she had just ordered from a larger branch. ‘Knowing the history of this place means knowing the history of other places too. History is about relations. Here. Look at these books about your mother’s birthplace. You should be very, very proud. Have you any idea of how important it was as a member of the British Empire? Do you know about the traffic between the Maritime cod fisheries and the Caribbean sugar plantations of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? Do you realize that in 1917, your mother’s birthplace produced and refined a full three-quarters of the oil for the entire British Empire? Did you know that her island nation was the home of some of the most important strategic and training bases for the allied forces during the Second World War…?’
Years after, when I had broken all contact with Miss Cameron, when I had abandoned everyone of my past, and when I thought myself completely anonymous in the city, I received a brown package at my door. I panicked when I saw that the return address was from a law office. The attached letter was on official stationary, and it explained that Miss Cameron had passed away. At the request of the deceased, the funeral had been private and attended only by close relatives. Donations to a support fund for victims and survivors of colon cancer would be appreciated in lieu of flowers. The letter concluded by stating that the deceased had left me one untitled book as enclosed.
There was no suspense, for I knew at once from the size and weight of the package that it could only be Miss Cameron’s precious book of verse. But I was struck with a flood of mixed emotions, including something very much like horror, when I opened the first page and found a dedication written in the neat and flowing script of a bygone generation. ‘To a trusted custodian.’ I couldn’t believe that Miss Cameron would do this. That she would actually inscribe my name upon such a precious artifact. That she would bestow this to me in such an indelible way.
But there was another surprise. I opened the book again and flipped through some of the yellowed and fragile pages. I stopped at ‘The Scarborough Settler’s Lament,’ and noticed something in the margin. A smudge on the fragile paper not unlike the print of a young boy’s thumb. I brought it up to my nose and caught it, just barely and maybe only because I had been searching for it. The scent of onion.
‘MEERA? I KNOW you probably haven’t explored the neighbourhood much. But have you ever visited the small community library not far from here? Around Kingston and Fisher?’
‘Exactly three doors east from Kingston, on the north side in a yellow house.’
‘You know the place? Did you ever know someone named Miss Cameron?’
‘She was pretty much a neighbour. My mother’s home was five doors east. We never bonded, though. My mother heard she was a radical. Maybe even some sort of left-liberal, god forbid. After that, no community library for me.’
‘I can’t believe you grew up here. I keep forgetting that I wasn’t the only coloured kid in the neighbourhood. What was it like for you?’
‘Are we ready to go?’ interrupts Mother. She’s joined us cocooned in a huge parka. She’s wearing yellow rainboots on the wrong feet.
‘You don’t need any of that, Mother. The weather is still holding. ’
WE’VE ALL BEGUN to enjoy our morning walks to the beach, though preparing for them is sometimes very trying. I get Mother out of the parka, though she protests the whole while. I slip Mother’s runners on her feet and struggle to do them up while she marvels at the technology of shoelaces and keeps pulling them undone. I show and explain to her the function of her turtleneck sweater, and she begins to grow doubtful. I eventually persuade her to trust me with the fuzzy noose. For a moment, her head is enveloped and her hands shape themselves into panicked claws as the material is pulled down over her face. Then her head pops through, a smile blooming on her face.
‘Again,’ she says.
‘Another time, Mother. Look, Meera’s waiting for us.’
‘Again, silly.’
Outside, the sun is out and the garage doors of the houses along the main street are brassy with light.
‘Goodpeanuts,’ calls Mother to a man stepping out of his front door and walking to his car.
‘Pardon me?’ he says.
‘Good … peanuts! Uh … goodbutterbread!’
He shakes his head before stepping into his car. We continue walking for a while, passing a house festooned with Halloween decorations. Mother eyes these cautiously but doesn’t ask.
‘Good morning, Mother,’ I finally stress to her.
‘Well, good morning to you too, dear.’
There are two ways to the shore. The first, of course, is by stumbling down the secret path at the back of the house. The second way takes much longer, but it’s also much easier for someone in Mother’s condition. You continue walking east and north along the curve of the main road until it dwindles to a gravel path and hooks down and under a railway bridge. We make it this far in about fifteen minutes, but now Mother stops and moves her lips while looking at some of the graffiti on the concrete foundation blocks. She looks pensive before inquiring.
‘Should we call Steven Wright for a … a blow job?’ she finally asks.
Meera laughs, unhelpfully.
‘Come on, Mother. We’re almost here.’
Once you pass under the bridge, there’s a surprisingly large sand beach between the rearing clay bluffs and the great lake. It’s the very thing depicted on the Port Junction billboard, and almost as pretty as they try to make it out. To the left, near an inlet and a stream and freshwater marshes, some geese have gathered in noisy groups for one last rest before making their epic lunge south. In front of us, the lake is empty save for two swans that bob with impossible elegance in the waves. To the right, the beach stretches away.
Our movements are slowed and thickened in the sand, and Mother clutches my hand for balance. Meera walks by herself on the wave-smoothed slope of the shore. She picks up an empty soft drink container with her index finger and thumb. She reads aloud ‘Pepsi’ and swings it, flop, back into the water, wiping her hands on her pants. She picks up an old Javex container and throws this back too. Mother is suddenly astonished by the waves. She lets go of my hand and approaches the edge of the lake, toeing the waters carefully and then backing away nervously with the advancing slosh of water. Then closer again and back. Again and again, moving farther down the shore and staining the cuffs of her jeans.
‘You’re getting your feet wet, Mother. Come back here.’
‘Leave her,’ says Meera, approaching. ‘She’s enjoying herself.’
We stand for a while looking out at the lake.
‘It’s not that bad,’ she says, gesturing about. ‘It’s almost a bit like nature.’
‘My brother used to come here to write.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘He’s a poet.’
There’s high shrieking and laughter and I turn to look. Even at this early hour, the beach isn’t empty. Three women have gathered in a group around a large driftwood log well away from the water where the grassy sand can accommodate their prams. They are so absorbed in their own conversation that they don’t appear to notice the excitement partly concealed by the tall grasses and shrubs. A circle of children, a flurry of scarves and hats. A boy and girl are trying to outdo each other in the pitch of their shrieks, and another girl calls out ‘Mommy’ toward the group of women. She moves out of the circle and gives me a clear view.
A very white boy. Is he an albino, then? In sneakers and a wind-breaker and the hanging tail of an oversized sweater, he’s improperly clothed for the season, never mind the shadow thrown by the bluffs. He’s playing the captured in some game, though not very actively. The other kids have tied his legs and arms with an old pink skipping rope, but the boy’s face is serene and he doesn’t give the faintest sign of struggle or discomfort, even as the others kick together a pile of leaves around his legs and occasionally spray sand upon his legs. He wriggles his arm fr
ee from the rope and then brings his fingertips to his mouth to chew thoughtfully. An older kid notices the free hand and reties the boy, who again offers not the slightest bit of resistance. All the while, several children run around making a loud but wordless ruckus. Aboo woo woo wah! Aboo woo woo woo wah…!
‘Can you watch Mother for a second?’ I ask Meera.
‘Are you going to play parent?’
‘I just want a closer look.’
The boy acts as though he is immune to the imaginations of those around him. He sits quietly as if contemplating the shore and water while the pigtailed girl who has moved away now returns, cradling something in her hands. There’s excitement and a few groans of cheerful disgust. A green-furred caterpillar. The girl drapes the creature with great care on the bare collar-bone of the boy just above the rim of his sweater. The caterpillar loses its grip and it disappears somewhere in the sweater between the wool and the boy’s pale skin. There are more groans and then two of the boys start pressing their hands against the wool where it might be. There is tense silence as they notice I’ve joined the group.
‘They’re squishing it,’ the girl complains.
‘We’ve caught an Indian,’ announces one of the youngest boys.
‘He’s not an Indian,’ explains another. ‘He’s artistic.’
‘Artistic?’ I ask.
‘It means he don’t feel nothing.’
‘He’s not artistic,’ says another. ‘He’s the boogey man.’
‘Booger man!’ yells yet another. The joke breaks the tension and all the children laugh frantically, scattering off and kicking up sand behind them as they run.
I untie the boy. He’s not an albino after all, just unusually pale. He’s silent and not obviously thankful for his freedom. His eyes don’t meet mine but they seem to be reading me peripherally. He reaches into his sweater and scoops out some of the remnants of the crushed caterpillar with his fingertips to have a look. A slimy patch of Velcro. A shudder moves through me. I take the boy’s wrist and brush his fingers against my pant leg, then feel his hand curl into mine. It’s cool and moist and impossibly a child’s hand. A snail without a shell, a mashed caterpillar itself. I pull away.
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