Chocolate Cherry Chai

by Taslim Burkowicz

  World War II set our tiny pioneer town abuzz with action. The Camrose fairgrounds, where I used to eat polished caramel apples so shiny you could see your face on them, turned into an army training camp. Overnight, thousands of military boys arrived. The local baker started baking cookies in the shape of maple leafs and put maple cream on top. The butcher handed out one free small sausage to any customer in uniform. But I knew if I was to stay in Camrose, I would never be anyone special. The soldiers never turned their heads at me the way they did Jane. Using patriotism as an excuse, I told Ma and Pa I wanted to move to Vancouver and train as a nurse to aid injured troops.

  After I settled into my dorm, I went for my first walk downtown. The streets were charcoal, the sky was silver, and the tall buildings looked like stalagmites, poking out from the ground of an ancient cave. I felt like I was walking through a black and white movie. I wondered how I would ever be able to stand out in this slick, wet city.

  I decided to march myself straight into the Woodward’s Department Store and buy myself some new clothes. For a long time I just stood out front admiring the tall “W” at the top of the tower. People said it blinked raspberry and you could see it for miles. But the beacon was turned off in case it attracted aerial attacks.

  The ladies inside the store wore their hair in fat rolls; they looked just like the porcelain dolls Ma kept on the shelves in the parlor. With my allowance, I bought silk gloves, a cocktail dress and hat, and cosmetics. Back at the dorm, dressed in my new outfit, I still looked like plain ‘ole me. So I tucked naked toilet paper rolls in my hair to form sausage curls. From a tube as thin as a cigarette, I applied ruby red lipstick, so sinfully gorgeous Jane would have given up her entire hat collection for it. I drew fake pantyhose lines on my bare legs, just as all the city girls were doing. Pa would say I was as smart as a horse’s whip when it came to money, not to mention sensible. But guess what? Pa wasn’t here.

  I looked at myself in the mirror. My lips were painted the same shade as the roof of our farmhouse barn. My first thought was: Gosh! The prairies has done followed me to the city! But then I carefully reexamined myself from all angles. I looked rather stunning. Suddenly, it was like I was the girl in siren red while the rest of the world was still dipped in grey. Men opened doors and tipped their fedoras at me. I might as well have died and woken up Ginger Rogers.

  It was no surprise, then, that I fit right in with the other nurses at the hospital. I was welcomed into the private world of circle-stitched satin brassieres and vanishing creams. No longer plain as oatmeal, I was a certified city girl myself now, and I did things like cut myself a set of short bangs right alongside my roommates, giggling wildly while sharing a small bottle of bootlegged gin in the dorm.

  It was around this time I met Johnny Curtis. He had long black hair so sleek it looked like crow’s feathers. His skin was the shade of golden sugar, like Pa’s and my brothers after a summer of farming. Most girls get flowers when they are courted, but Johnny Curtis sent me paper cups filled with coffee beans, no small thing in a time when coffee was as scarce as brown hairs are on my head today. He kissed me just like Humphrey Bogart kissed Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, right there in a swing club. We talked under umbrellas in rainy Vancouver where the water came down in lines and slashes. Underneath the net of my pill-box hat, my face was wet and glossy, staring up at Johnny with shiny, unconcealed adoration.

  Johnny Curtis said the only thing he had left from his daddy, the good-for-nothing, was the name Curtis. He knew a good woman was to be treated better than Yukon gold. Johnny Curtis and I had no idea where the two of us could be sent at any given time. Europe was a place I’d only ever read about, and the country mouse in me yearned to see it. But now I was afraid to be away from Johnny and his delicious smell of leather and gingerbread.

  Johnny proposed over tea and cake in our favourite diner, with a modest gold band with five tiny diamond chips. I ended up getting married alongside a long line of girls at city hall, all of us marrying soldiers. By the time the news reached Ma and Pa, Johnny Curtis had been sent away.

  While I sulked in the hospital ward, doing my best impression of a pouty Vivien Leigh, I met an injured soldier named Stanley Bigsby. He pestered me endlessly to read to him, even though there were a good many nurses happy to do so. He fancied dry books about naval armies and sailing. While the other soldiers forced us to find liquor to relieve their wartime woes, Stanley claimed alcohol was for the brutes. He had the dainty hands of a bank clerk and a tall spindly frame he wore awkwardly, not having found any use for outdoor work. He was as boring as the Vancouver rain, but soon I became comfortable sitting at his bedside. We had acknowledged the wedding band on my finger, but there was an unspoken “just in case your beau doesn’t come back from the war” ticket he was offering me. All the married nurses were doing it, giving their addresses to an assortment of soldiers, even the legless or one-armed ones.

  At the end of the war, I boarded the train home with my hat boxes and a coat of red lipstick that bore no apologies. My family stood on the platform waving me in with hankies even though I could see them plain as day. Jane was indifferent to me, but my brothers threw me on their shoulders. When we reached the farmhouse, I sat at the breakfast nook, laying my white gloves on the gingham table cloth.

  I cleared my throat. “Well, I suppose I best get my overalls on and help the boys then. Unlike Jane, I have a farmer’s figure.”

  Ma looked confused. “Eileen, when you were gone Jane fed our horse Angel mouldy corn feed and nearly killed her. We always trusted you. That’s why we put you out with the menfolk.”

  And so I sat out from doing farm chores that year. Just as I was beginning to get accustomed to the fact I might indeed be a widow, news came. Johnny Curtis was alive and well in Africa! He said it was high time I met his family with a proper introduction at Pacific Central Station in Vancouver.

  I’m not sure why I kept his letter a secret. To my family I suggested we go on a vacation. Ma got her hair done in preparation for the trip. Pa asked what the big fuss was all about, but he took himself down to the local barber’s and went and shaved his whole beard off. Jane arranged to leave her children with her husband and his mother, and just like that, we all boarded the train to Vancouver.

  My brothers were the usual menace in public. They put on cutesy British accents when they drank tea on the train. My parents looked like what they were: simple farmers in their best set of church clothes. Only Jane looked like she belonged. Her blonde curls tumbled over her shoulders like Veronica Lake and my red lipstick shone upon her lips. I felt a stabbing sensation of envy, but then I reminded myself I was the toast of the town in Vancouver. The train rocked steadily, halting to a stop at Pacific Central Station.

  Immediately I saw Johnny Curtis. Only he didn’t look like Johnny Curtis at all. He was wearing a cone on his head, made of what looked to be tree bark. He had on furs made from squirrel or perhaps raccoon. And he was jumping around making a whole racket of noise. A group of women surrounded him, whooping and hollering. The ladies all had on long skirts made of cedar bark. To the passengers disembarking the train, the group was an astonishing nuisance, yet Johnny Curtis and the women shamelessly continued to pound on their tribal drums, singing and carrying on like the world was going to end right there and then.

  I sat up rigidly in the cushioned booth. My brothers turned to me and spoke in one voice. “This is Pacific Central Station. Isn’t this where we are supposed to get off to see Vancouver?”

  Johnny and I used to stand outside of the station and stare at the big stone structure with all of its tiny little windows. We thought the station would be better off shrunken into a dollhouse replica and placed in a Christmas village somewhere, on a cotton blanket posing as snow, alongside miniature hand-painted trees. But this Johnny Curtis was some Indian singing in God knows what language with a bunch of people the likes of which I’d never seen. This was not the man who
had taught me how to do the lindy hop, who used soap that smelled like citrus and orange when no one in the whole hospital could find a decent bar in town. And then it struck me — his momma had probably made the soap herself. I pictured Johnny Curtis in a canoe made of birch bark, fishing; Johnny Curtis yelling out native calls while hunting in the forest. And still, I didn’t move.

  Jane tapped me on the shoulder. Her blue eyes twinkled under the net of my pill-box hat, like two streetlights that belonged in the same Christmas village. “What’s wrong?”

  “I recognize a soldier. I am going to see if he has heard anything about my husband.”

  “Husband … ?”

  I jumped up and went over to the next car, where I waited for some time while soldiers brushed past me, anticipating the odd kiss they may receive in the heat of the moment. I turned on my heel to meet my family.

  “He didn’t make it,” I said stiffly, my upper lip quivering.

  “Oh, honey? You were expecting him here?” Ma looked out at the platform.

  “I met a soldier who did have news. My husband, well, he died on the front.”

  The steel wheels started to screech and my family swayed with the motion, confused whether we were staying or going. “I am not up to showing y’all around. I want to go right back home,” I said firmly, allowing tears to come to my eyes.

  “Oh honey, of course.” Ma sank down beside me. “But first we have to get off and switch tracks.” I could hear my brothers groan. They had been excited about meeting cigarette girls in a hotel cocktail lounge and ordering their first Tom Collins.

  “My husband looked just like Cary Grant. He was some kind of wonderful. If it is all the same to ya’ll, I would like to get off at the next station to switch tracks. I know too many soldiers at this stop and I don’t want the sympathy right now.”

  “Think of how lucky you are, young lady, that you decided to use your brains and wait until he returned before having a baby,” Pa said, tapping his head. I could feel Jane harden beside me. The wheels began rolling. My family lurched forward for a second, and then settled into position, like a crooked portrait on the wall.

  Just then, I looked out at the native family banging away at the drums. Purely by accident, my eyes locked with those of Johnny Curtis. At first his eyes widened, in pure happiness and recognition. And then they froze over, like a bucket of water forgotten about in the horse shed over winter. I made my eyes as blank as possible — as though I did not see him at all.

  Later, I threw every letter Johnny Curtis had ever written me into our fireplace. I kept expecting someone to question me, prod me, uncover my lie, but people only offered me condolences.

  I tell you what, though. My life hasn’t been all bad. I have three sons that remind me exactly of my younger brothers. The beds in my house are always made, and I can tell you without hesitation what will be for dinner every day of the week. Stanley has never been big on surprises. The grandchildren love playing with his model ships.

  But, if I ever hear the song “Sunday, Monday or Always” by Bing Crosby, I remember Johnny Curtis, tea and cake shops, and those Casablanca kisses. I will stop for a moment, and zip back into that time, when people took pride in knowing what music was good enough to dance to. And then I smell Johnny all over again — that mix of leather, lemons, and spiced gingerbread. I have to remind myself: I am a different woman now, and I have a beef pot roast that won’t go and make itself, you know. For I gave up wearing true red lipstick the day I got married. And then I keep on marching home.

  6

  MY MOTHER’S KITCHEN WAS bustling. On the stove was brewing a dhal with lemon and peanuts, a coconut veggie kebab curry, and a bean and potato curry. Off to the side: a dish filled with cumin rice and a container filled with handmade roti. My Gujarati might only be passable, but my cooking was turning out to be pretty great.

  “It’s nice that you are spending so much time with your grandmother,” my mom said, stirring the potatoes. “Taking her to the centre and sitting with the elderly.”

  I dusted the flour from my hands into the sink. “Actually her friends are way more interesting than I thought they would be. In a weird way, they remind me of my girlfriends in Japan.”

  “Well,” my mother said, thumbing through the family recipe book and adding new curry-stained fingermarks, “let’s have a look at your carrot and ginger pickle.”

  She put the glass container under her nose and sniffed. “Perfect amount of garlic and your roti are so round.” She faced me. “Is this new interest in cooking because of this Dylan?”

  “What? No,” I said blushing. Things had been moving fast with Dylan, but I wasn’t ready yet to share the details. I felt guilty — I’d met Dylan’s parents already and Dylan was already making plans for a ski trip to their place in Whistler, in part I was sure to convince me that travelling locally could be fun.

  We’d met near his law office and had gone to a cigar club in Yaletown with a patio. Since neither of us actually smoked, the waitress had handed us novelty chocolate cigars.

  “It’s eerily quiet down here, especially after New Year’s.” While I spoke, Dylan pushed my jewellery up and circled his fingers around my wrist.

  “Most people spend time with their families on Christmas. For people who are addicted to drugs and don’t have much of a family, risks for overdoses during the holidays increase substantially.”

  “Sounds like you get along well with your family.”

  He let go of my hands and started tapping his chocolate stick against the glass tabletop. “My parents wanted me to follow a certain path into adulthood, and they are happy where I’m at. I became a lawyer. Not sure they are thrilled about my volunteering job.”

  He hadn’t really agreed with me, I realized. I was about to press him for more, but he leaned forward and brushed my hair out of my eyes. “Why don’t we pay them a visit tonight? They only live a few minutes away.”

  The glassy condominium overlooked the waters of English Bay. When I stepped through the doorway, my eye was immediately drawn to the dining room table, what initially I thought was a large slab of simple wood. But the table, Mr. and Mrs. Taylor informed me, had been painstakingly smoothed down by traditional Japanese hand tools by the maker, an artist named George Nakashima. Custom glass cabinetry lined the walls and black and white futons topped with red pillows sat low to the floor. Above the futons hung a large photograph of the open sea. Done in black and white, the sky was a blinding shade of white, while the ocean rippled black, grey, and vast.

  Dylan squeezed my hand, pressing the charm of my bracelet into my wrist, leaving a light indentation. I felt awkward, sitting there on the edge of the futon, but when Mrs. Taylor turned her head, Dylan grazed my lips with a peppermint kiss.

  “The photographer of the piece you keep staring at is Hiroshi Sugimoto, Maya. I also have a gorgeous kimono that I special ordered from Japan if you’d like to take a look next time.”

  “Sure, Mrs. Taylor.”

  “Oh please, do I look like a Mrs. Taylor?” She touched her smooth forehead as proof that she didn’t. “Call me Judy.”

  It had been rather difficult to concentrate on what Judy was saying with Dylan sitting next to me, leaning so close. I saw a picture of him on the wall as a baby, chubby with white-blond hair. His sky blue eyes were just as they were now, serious looking, concerned, brooding. Catching me looking at the picture, Dylan grinned.

  “Where do you find places to wear your dress-up saris? How I wish I were brave enough to leave the house in a half top and a curtain drape. I’d feel just like an extra in Cleopatra,” Judy went on, handing me a glass of perfectly chilled white wine.

  Dylan shook his head at her, embarrassed. “Mother, I don’t think you mean Cleopatra.”

  “The movie with Elizabeth Taylor in those exquisite gowns?” Judy pouted, handing her husband a Scotch.

  “I thin
k you mean Gandhi, Mother,” Dylan offered, smirking at me. “Right, Maya?”

  Judy’s fine eyebrows furrowed. No doubt she was imagining a sea of peasants taking to the streets in sari robes. Mother and son looked at me, awaiting a response. I took a sip of my citrusy wine, trying to taste the promised notes of mango.

  “Um, I rather like the idea of saris being compared to gold couture gowns. Some of the designer saris in Bollywood movies cost thousands of dollars to make. When I travelled to India I learned that ancient Indian societies might have started up early Egyptian ones and that Indian scholars were not an uncommon sight in old Egypt. So sari gowns might be connected to Grecian dresses after all. But you know, I’m not an expert on this … ”

  Judy shot her son a look of victory.

  Back in our simple kitchen, my mom’s voice sliced through my thoughts. “Is Vancouver feeling more like home?”

  “Cooking like this feels like home,” I said. And it did, it really did, but that was all I could give her.

  “Are you planning to run away again?”

  “Mom, travelling is not running away.”

  “No matter where you go in the world, everything you are just follows you. You don’t leave it behind simply because you move on … ”

  I rolled my eyes at her as she turned to go up the stairs.

  Dylan had asked me the same thing last night on East Hastings, after we’d made a quick stop to drop off needles. How hard he’d gripped my forearms as blue and red lights from a passing police car flickered across his face. If he’d let go of me, pushed me ever so slightly, I’d have fallen right into traffic, to be crushed by the cars rushing down East Hastings — just another tragedy accompanied by a another blur of crazy, blinking lights. My heart had been in my throat.