by Stephen Law
Breaking from her exile, Shaz rushed over and put a hand on his shoulder for balance — “Here, let me” — as she reached toward the cupboard for a second glass.
He shrugged her off and retrieved it himself.
She took her drink, an island between them. He was so far away.
“Frank. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” His fingers seemed to want to squeeze the glass back into sand. “What the fuck does that mean?”
She put her milk down.
“Have you talked to him? Found out why he did this?” Frank gestured to his body, contorting as he moved, trying to point to the bruises on his face. But he was unable to lift his arm past his chest.
Words dried up in her mouth. Her mind implored her to move across, to take him into her arms, but she remained rooted.
“You have no idea what this is like.” He glared, then shook his head and took a long sip of milk.
She waited, wanting to capture his gaze when he opened his eyes, as though she could hold them and keep him from turning away. But he wouldn’t look at her.
Shaz swallowed. “Tell me, Frank.”
He slammed the glass on the countertop and she jumped. Chocolate milk sloshed over the side of the glass.
“What do you want to know?” His voice was loud. “You want to know that I’m so fucking scared to go out that I can’t even make it to the corner to pick up a lousy litre of milk? Is that it? You want to know that I’m so scared I hyperventilate and wet my bed thinking about it?”
“I’m …” Shaz could feel her hands shaking on the counter.
He wasn’t finished. “My mother has to wipe my ass because I can’t bend around to do it. I haven’t worn diapers since I was two, Shaz, and now my mother is wiping my fucking ass.”
Shaz shook her head, trying to shake it off, shake it away. “You have your work.”
“You’re kidding me.” He was swinging his head back and forth, eyes wild, like a cornered animal. In a seething whisper, he said, “All I can think about is designing little fucking prisons with walls of concrete as thick as elephants and deep dark pits where your little shit of a brother would be stuck to rot in hell.”
He looked at Shaz, staring right into her. “But you know the fucking bitch of it all, Shaz? The bitch of it is I’m the one living in that fucking prison.” He spun around and hobbled down the hallway.
She could hear him labouring up the stairs. Standing stock still, she waited until she heard the closing of the bedroom door — he didn’t slam it, but shut it firmly, a controlled action. Cloth in hand, she wiped up the spill on the counter and returned the carton to the fridge. She poured the last few swallows in the glasses into the sink, watching the milk swirl down the drain. Then she showed herself out, gently closing the door behind her.
***
“CAN YOU FIX THIS?” Wade held out both wrists. Shaz took them in her hands and turned them over. The whites and browns couldn’t come to an agreement — they were using Wade’s wrists as a battleground. He had vitiligo, a condition that caused the skin to lose pigmentation.
“I’m going all Michael Jackson.”
Chocolate, brown, caramel, pink, golden, olive, chalky, tan, café, red, brown, black, yellow, white. These were all colours, tones, and shades that could describe the skin, or the people. On the street Shaz knew he would be deemed “Black,” though his colouring was more accurately brown, except for these splotches on his wrists where the skin was white or pink where it had lost its original shade.
She spent a lot of time thinking about colour pairings in the different designs and on different bodies, what helped to highlight, set off, or contrast. Her cupboard carried a range of tints and colours. A misty midnight blue to accentuate a scarlet red. An ochre violet mix to moderate an aquamarine. So many tints and shades were available to her, to the world. And yet, with all that, the world still coloured people yellow, red, black, white, or brown.
“I haven’t done this before,” Shaz said. Honesty was always a good idea when dealing with skin. She’d successfully inked a woman’s aureole after reconstructive surgery from breast cancer, but skin tone blending was new.
“I like your work,” was all he said.
This work would require research into techniques and approaches — she didn’t want to make matters worse. She decided to mix the ink herself, rather than use a prefabricated blend. It was something she wanted to get right.
***
SHE HAD HIM RETURN on Monday, when normally the studio was closed, so they wouldn’t be disturbed.
She took his hand in hers and tested the colour. “Are you ready?”
Wade held her gaze. He appeared more confident than she did.
Travelling along his wrist as though she were operating an electric typewriter, she moved back and forth, the armature bar of the needle rapidly piercing in and out of the skin, slowly colouring in his hand. Toward his palm, where the white had seeped in, she noticed the contrast between his arms and her own, like the contrast between his arms and his wrists. Like the contrast between her and Desmond, or Desmond and Frank.
“You okay?” She wasn’t sure how sensitive his skin was.
He nodded for her to keep going.
People remarked sometimes on her “tan.” Others thought she was Spanish or Middle Eastern. Once, she’d been asked if she were one of the Black Irish. Her hair was black, but without the tight curls of her cousins. Her lips were full, her nose sharp, and her eyes green. White enough to pass, but dark enough to make you wonder — that was how Shaz always thought of herself. Desmond not so much. Desmond was black.
What would happen to Wade if the vitiligo were to affect his whole body, she wondered. Would he still be considered Black, even if he was white? She knew there was much more to it than colour, but people liked having boxes to fit others into. And Wade, despite what the condition did to his colouring, was still going to get put into the Black box.
“I get a lot of ribbing. It doesn’t feel good, you know?”
She continued filling in the spots where the white had spread.
It mattered to them — to Desmond, to Wade, to her. Inside the community, at home, the shades of black were noticed; it’s why bleaching cream and hair straightening were practised. But outside, you were either Black or you passed as the other. When Shaz went out with her family, people would stare out the corners of their eyes, assessing them, weighing how she fit in.
“People say I’m trying to be white. But I’m not white.” Wade wasn’t flinching or twitching; he held himself still.
She never felt quite right, but the relatives fawned over her complexion, her straight hair, her not brown yet not quite Barbie eyes. She preferred to think that the diversity between them made the world a beautiful place, though she knew that’s not how it often played out.
Slowly, Wade’s wrists were transformed, the colours of his skin blending together. Giving her hand a break, she wiped his wrist with a cloth. It didn’t matter how much she changed him from white to brown, he still bled red.
Frank, Desmond, her, they all bled red.
***
AN UNKNOWN NUMBER FLASHED on the screen of her cellphone. The text message indicator buzzed. Dear old dad. She deleted his messages as though they were spam. He was more persistent now than he had ever been when she was growing up. The dedication to his own self-interest might have impressed her — if it didn’t make her fume.
An interesting reversal. No longer the little kid waiting for him at the top of the steps, night after night, till it grew dark, now she was the one at the ball.
She relished the role change. It was the only means she had available to her to exact revenge for his neglect. Doling out punishment. That was what was sweet about it. Years of longing followed by years of anger, neither of which brought resolve. But this time she chose to ignore him, to let
him stew.
She thought she’d grow tired of it and relent, eventually thumb type him an acknowledgement at least. But so far that hadn’t happened. For now, she was enjoying it.
6
RIGHT FOREARM
meerkat
A MAN RAN AT the wall in the alleyway between the studio and the pharmacy. Next, somehow, he was running horizontally on the vertical brick face, like some kind of gymnastic spiderman. Instead of going over the wall, his body traced an arc at the top and he skittered back down, feet feathery. His descent was graceful up until the landing, when his foot teetered on a piece of broken brick on the ground below and the sound of an ankle crunch and a deep cry of pain cut through the air.
Shaz winced, her eyes jumping from his foot to his face. He clenched his teeth and his features contorted.
For a split second, that frozen moment of time — enough for a single thought — she considered fading into the brickwork. Instead, she ran towards him.
Rocking on the ground, knees to his chest, hands holding his calf, superhero he was not. A protrusion on his ankle like a snapped twig.
She shrugged off her jacket and bunched it up, offering a softer surface for his leg, which she placed on her bent knee.
She watched him squeeze his lips tight and struggle for whatever decorum he could muster from his prone spot on the ground, leg in the air on a stranger’s knee.
“Hi there,” he said. Then, “damn.” He slammed his arms down his side. When the throbbing seemed to have passed, he looked up at her with a grimace that hinted at a smile.
“I don’t think we can stay like this very long, nice as it is.”
“Let me just take a look, before we take you anywhere.”
He didn’t say no, so she carefully undid his shoe, watching his face to make sure what she did wasn’t going to make it worse. Gingerly, she removed the sock, rolling it past the bulge where the ankle was either broken or bent to a sprain. He held his breath but allowed her to continue. It didn’t look broken, maybe a crack in the bone or a nasty twist. His skin was smooth, his legs muscular. Short hairs accentuated the bridge of each toe.
Fighting an urge to run her hand up his calf, she imagined a tattoo inked to his skin. A gecko — colour changer and wall scamperer.
His coffee with cream eyes watched her. She rested her fingers on the skin of his foot and felt the heat coming off him. She wondered if he could smell the soap on her skin from her morning bath.
“I feel dizzy,” he said, as he lay back and placed his head on the concrete. How easily he had deferred to her, a stranger.
She lifted his leg, removed the jacket and bunched it up under his head. He didn’t flinch or perhaps didn’t notice the tattoos on her arms that her tank top revealed.
She took in his scent when she lifted his head. Cardamom? She wanted to lick her lips.
He winced, then sat up abruptly. “I can’t stay here.”
A crowd had gathered to watch from a distance.
“Okay, let me help you.” First propping him up, then hoisting him to his feet, she held him as he balanced on his other foot. He leaned against her.
“Come into my studio. It’s just right here.” He weighed more than she thought, but she didn’t let him notice. They hopped over to the entrance and she held the door while he shuffled inside. Manoeuvring him into one of the chairs in the waiting area, she went for a cold pack in the fridge.
The ice cooled the heat on her fingers. She steadied herself on his bicep while she applied the pack to his ankle.
He gasped and she rode the tension as his body recoiled and his muscles stiffened. They were solid and hard in a way that made her want to lay him flat and absorb the tension.
“My name is Rashid.” The cold must have begun to seep into the fracture and numb the pain.
She released her hands and let him take the pack.
Rashid. She breathed it in.
“Are you the artist?”
Pulling away from his gaze, she forced her eyes off him. At this rate, she’d be needing an icepack of her own.
Needing a deflection, she turned to face him again. “You look familiar …”
“I work at the North Branch library. With kids and teens.”
White teeth. One crooked cuspid on his lower jaw, to keep things interesting. She liked that it wasn’t perfect. Shaz scrambled to gather the errant emotions.
“So, I don’t have to ask the obvious stupid question, as to whether the tattoo artist has any tattoos of her own, as I can see that venomous-looking rodent with a knife on your arm. Did you do it yourself?”
This made her blush, and she wasn’t sure why. “It’s a meerkat.” As a cover-up, she went for her flash book on the coffee table. “These are, ah, samples of my work.” It sounded as though she were bragging, even though customers came in every day and combed through her designs. She sat beside him.
Rashid leafed through the pages while holding the ice on his foot. He went through the flash like he was examining petroglyphs he’d discovered in a cave. Realizing she was holding her breath, almost as though she were scared, she told herself to get a grip. Breathe in and out, like Aleysha had shown her from her yoga practice. Slow down the pulses. Switch the focus.
“What were you doing on the wall?”
“Parkour.”
Swallow. “And what is parkour?”
“A gymnastic circus sort of thing.” He grinned. “You do it in public spaces, where you kind of run and jump and slide along railings or scramble up walls. Pretty much the opposite of what you saw.”
She laughed, then felt bad. “Sorry.”
“No. Clearly I’m still practising, or at least I was. It’s supposed to be a way to move around obstacles.” She imagined him along the wall again, climbing and scaling. She crawled after him.
“You test yourself to jump higher, or leap a fence more cleanly. It was invented to practise the art of escape from a guy who had served in the French foreign legion.” Rashid smirked as he glanced down at his foot. “You are supposed to do something spectacular to challenge yourself and awe your peers.”
“I am definitely in awe. Er, was in awe.”
It was his turn to laugh. “My kids at the library do it and they had me tag along one day. But they are really good. I was trying to sneak in some practice. They are out there three or four days a week, but I can only make it out on weekends.”
Reaching for his foot again, she gently flexed it up and down. “I don’t think it’s broken.”
The heat was less of a burn, now. More of a smoulder. Their bodies were close. She turned her head toward him and they shared a look, the hungry kind.
But he broke it off. “You’d better call me a cab.”
She retreated to the door, resisting a peek back. The air outside gave her a chance to catch her breath. Finally, she spotted a roaming taxi. Rashid was standing now, making his way to the door. Opening it, she helped him into the cab, supporting him on one shoulder while his shoe dangled in his hand.
“You should come out, on Sunday at the Forum. Watch the group do their thing. You can see how it is supposed to be done.”
“Maybe I will,” she said.
Back in the studio, she noticed his sock, left behind on the chair. Standing in the doorway, she watched the cab drive away.
He remained in her mind as she worked on tattooing a star just below a woman’s ear. “Hold still just a minute more,” she said. Anything on or near the face was delicate and difficult.
She thought of his face: sharp, clean, warm, attractive.
Traditional cultures had been doing face tattoos for thousands of years. Shaz particularly admired the Ainu women in Japan who used face designs to ward off illness, invite fertility, or indicate marital status.
She couldn’t be sure how Rashid felt about tattoos — his response had
been more factual than complimentary. He might think they were something just for criminals or sailors. Or worse, just a trend. Would he be interested in the Ainu?
The star she was inking was the first of what was to be a series of stars circling the woman’s ear in an orbit above the butterfly on her neck. The stars were lights that had dimmed in her life — people she wanted to remember.
As she finished, Shaz thought about what she could add to Rashid’s face to make it more beautiful. She also wondered what one wore to a session of parkour, and if escape is also the precursor to being found.
***
THE TRAFFIC WAS SUBDUED as she walked to the Forum — there wasn’t the kinetic energy of a weekday. When she arrived, she didn’t see anyone, no superheroes scaling the face of the building. She must have been early.
She walked through the empty parking lot, paying attention to the cracks that separated the concrete, forming fissures and rivulets for summer rains. She kept an eye out for things out of place: fallen coins, dropped earrings. It was a habit and a practice of the mind. Finding something special told her how to face the day, like finding symbolism in the appearance of a double rainbow or an eagle.
Nothing out of the ordinary today.
Looking out to the street, she spied a group approaching in the distance. Hoodies, loose clothing, they walked in a pack. Shaz stiffened.
She stole another glance, just to be sure. The familiar frame, the familiar gait. Desmond was there, embedded in the gang. She never thought to look for his crew on this side of the harbour.
Retreating to the side of the building, she hugged the brick, trying to squeeze herself invisible. They were just around the other side. She could hear them in muffles. She waited, wanting to flee and spy in equal measure. Maybe she could catch them at what they were doing, catch them in the act, like beating on some poor guy walking by. It never occurred to her to be scared for her own safety.