That Time I Loved You

by That Time I Loved You- Stories (retail) (epub)

  One morning before school, June came by the house as usual to pick her up. June stared at Josie, who’d taken to holding her books against her chest and walking with her head thrust forward like a turtle.

  “That’s it,” June said, yanking on Josie’s upper arm and pulling her in the opposite direction.

  “What are you doing, June? Quit fooling around. We’re going to be late.”

  “You and me are ditching school, Jos.” June’s grip was fierce. Josie was perplexed; between the two of them, June was definitely the rule abider.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Ditching school. The mall. We’re going to walk around, eat lunch in the food court, and then I’m going to take you to a matinee.” She poked Josie in the shoulder. “You. Need. Cheering. Up.” She grinned. “Besides, I need to get my mind off my love life.” For a moment, Josie’s mood picked up. Playing hooky and going to the mall was a pretty big no-no. Their parents would ground them for a lifetime. They were only allowed to go to the mall on Saturdays, and even then, June’s parents didn’t always grant her that. This was an adventure, and she and June hadn’t had one in a long time.

  For the first time since the whole Bruce thing started, Josie had never been happier to hear her friend complain. They cowered in the back corner of the bus shelter, waiting for the Warden bus, their backs to the street in case a passing car contained a parent who would tell on them. Finally, the bus came, they got seats, and the landscape went by, squat strip malls in shades of grey. Josie sat without speaking, gazing through the filthy glass even though June tried to talk to her.

  “So, what film do you want to see, huh? Amityville Horror is playing still. You wanted to see that?” June hated scary movies but knew Josie loved them. Josie pressed the back of June’s hand with hers and nodded, still staring out the window. June also fell silent.

  The stores weren’t even open yet when they arrived. They strolled through the empty mall, looking in the store windows to kill time. Empty of people except for some custodians pushing large mops, the place felt eerie

  “Hey, Jos. Can you talk to me? Like, tell me about your aunt if you want. Anything.”

  They were stopped in front of Fairweather, and the Christmas display was already up. The lady mannequins stared at them with vacant eyes among reindeer and tinsel. June and Josie were dressed in the outfits that they’d bought together here, at this mall: matching coats, but June’s was red where hers was navy, same Cougar boots, same hats with different coloured stripes and pompoms. They could have been twins. The details of their faces were lost in the reflection but Josie knew June was staring at her.

  She opened her palm for June to take. June grabbed on to it instantly and squeezed. Josie took a breath and considered, measured and weighed her heart against June’s tender one. Because Josie knew June as well as she knew herself, she knew what her best friend could and could not bear.

  “You’re right, June. I really miss my aunt,” Josie said as June leaned her head against Josie’s shoulder.

  Things

  Darren’s mother sucked her teeth, in the Jamaican way. This, Darren knew, meant trouble. He stared at the red-inked “6/10” on the math test in his hand. A pass was still good, but his mother did not think it was good enough. He knew from the teeth-sucking and the long pause that followed that a lecture was coming.

  “Boy, what did I tell you? You have to do better than that. I didn’t come to this country and scrub all those toilets so that my own can’t pass a math test, you hear?” Her voice always got louder, and her patois stronger, as she got madder.

  “But I did pass!” he shouted. He knew instantly that this was the wrong, wrong move. Her pause this time deepened and changed position; he saw the storm gather in her eyes. And then, whack. Right across his cheek. It smarted, but he blinked and held himself together.

  She pointed to the stairs, too angry to say more. He thumped up to his room to show her that he was mad too. He didn’t know the exact target of his anger, but it didn’t matter. He was mad.

  Darren stayed in his room and read comic books, trying to ignore the rumblings in his stomach. After it was seven, he guessed that there would be no dinner. He tried to concentrate on the Fantastic Four, but his head kept going back to the math test. He had told his mother that he was studying that night, but he’d spent the time drawing comics instead. Darren felt a bit of guilt about that, but just a bit. He had spent the night drawing a supervillain named Galactus to match the Thing, his favourite of the Fantastic Four. The Thing was really a guy named Ben Grimm. He got exposed to radiation, and as a result, his skin became covered with large plates of craggy rocks and boulders. He was orangey brown—not an easy colour to create with his pencil crayons—but Darren mixed No. 2 Sarasota Orange and No. 11 Chestnut Brown and got something pretty close. His mother wouldn’t buy him the twenty-four pack of Laurentian pencil crayons because she said twelve was enough. Nav had the pack of twenty-four because his family was rich from owning Mac’s Milk. If Darren had had the twenty-four, he would have mixed Sarasota Orange with No. 21 Indian Red, and it would have looked perfect.

  The Thing might have been known as the monster of the Fantastic Four, but Darren thought he was the smartest. He and Danny, the resident comics expert over at Mac’s, debated this point a lot. Danny thought the Human Torch was smarter and that fire was stronger than brute strength. Darren agreed that while those things were true, the Torch could only hold his fire body for seventeen hours before burning out, so that was pretty limited. Nav thought Sue Reed, also known as the Invisible Woman, was the be all and end all. She may have been pretty and blond, but Darren thought invisibility could only do so much. Since Nav was Darren’s best friend, when Nav said his favourite was the Invisible Woman with that dopey smile on his face, Darren had to let him be happy and think whatever he wanted.

  Most importantly, the Thing, with his tough skin that could withstand bullets and bombs, was constantly jumping in front of danger to shield his friends and innocent bystanders. It wasn’t that the Thing was indestructible—his rock surface could be penetrated by extremely lethal weaponry—but the Thing always took the chance and never backed down. And the Thing was funny. He was the only one of the Fantastic Four with any sense of humour, and boy did he make Darren laugh. Being funny was its own special power.

  Darren and Nav had decided that they would create their first comic book together. Even though Nav had the better art supplies, he was more of a word man, and it was decided that Darren would be in charge of the drawing while Nav would write the story. The project became their obsession, the object on which all their thoughts focused.

  Still trapped in his room at seven-thirty, Darren, trying not to think about how hungry he was, was drawing flying caterpillars dropping all over the Thing when his door creaked open. He didn’t look up, not wanting to give his mother the satisfaction. She placed a tray on his desk, beside his sketchbook, and said, “Eat your vegetables.”

  He waited until she shut the door to look down at the tray. Rice, chicken and corn. He grinned and shut his book.

  The year before, he had announced to his mother that when he grew up, he was going to be a comic book artist. He always got good marks in art. She was not impressed until he reasoned that when he got famous, he would make enough money to take care of them both. Maybe they could move to Florida and swim in the sea every day. He drew this picture with Nav’s No. 13 Ultramarine Blue for the sea and figures of him and his mother standing in it. He considered his No. 12 Black to draw them, but he wasn’t black. Neither was his mother. They were both No. 10 Photo Brown. He was a bit Chestnut Brown too, but his mother was also No. 26 Burnt Sienna, a colour that even Nav didn’t have. Only the luckiest kids could afford the thirty-six-pack Laurentians.

  “Oh, I like the sea!” his mother had said.

  On most days, she looked at his drawings and smiled big. On those good days, they would turn up their stereo and dance in the living room. The sound of Peter Tosh
or Aretha Franklin filled the house. On weekends if his mother wasn’t working a shift at the hospital, her friends would come over, and Darren would take turns dancing with the aunties.

  Other days, she told him not to waste his time; there were no Black superheroes. Darren told her that was only partially true. Danny had said there was Luke Cage, Hero for Hire, but those comics never made it to Mac’s Milk. And the Thing may have been orange, but Darren knew in his heart that he was actually Black.

  Darren also did pretty well in science. He loved bringing home good marks. His mother would take the As, pin them on the corkboard and say, “Keep your head down and do your work. Don’t make a fuss. Don’t look them in the eye. Get the good marks, get the graduation paper and get out. That’s all that matters.”

  She talked to him like he were a train already in full motion and she wanted him to stay that way. “You remember that, Darren. That’s how you’ll get by in this country.” Other kids got bedtime stories; he got lectures on how to get by. She’d be rubbing lotion into her hands, which were always cracked because she had to wash them so much, shaking her head like something had reminded her of something else.

  “But what if they ask me to look at them?” He’d try not to sound exasperated, but he was. He’d bring home an A, and she’d tell him not to look at people. The lines in the conversation didn’t even cross a little.

  Her brown eyes would bore holes into him like Cyclops, who shot laser beams from his eye visor. “Son, they never will.”

  There were things that his mother said that he didn’t understand, and things he didn’t feel she understood about him. For instance, Darren was pretty sure he had secret powers like the superheroes in his comics. The time in Grade 6 when he beat up Larry Lems confirmed this suspicion. It was during lunch one day, and he, Nav, June and Josie were eating their bag lunches on the field. It was the first warm day in spring, and the ground was dry with brown patches of grass and dirt. Larry Lems approached them and said he was hungry. If Larry had been a nice person, Darren would have shared his baloney sandwich, but this was Larry Lems, and he didn’t ask nicely. Darren said, “Get lost, Larry. Not our problem that your dad doesn’t feed you.” Maybe that was harsh, but Larry was always trying to start something with the other kids.

  This set Larry off. His face got really red (like No. 3 Poppy Red) and he yelled, “Don’t talk to me like that, nigger. Don’t even look at me. Your mom’s a dirty nigger. I wouldn’t eat the sandwich she touched.”

  Before even thinking, Darren got up and was on Larry. Larry was a good fifteen pounds heavier and three inches taller, but a supernatural strength had taken control of Darren’s body. He felt no fear, just the power in his arms, as he punched Larry again and again until Larry’s nose squirted blood as red as his face and it spilled onto the ground. Some kid ran and got a teacher from inside the school, and Darren felt large hands try to pull him off Larry. Even the teacher struggled because Darren was still possessed by the otherworldly strength.

  While it made him a hero among the kids at school, he got a detention and a call to his mother from the principal. That night, she gave him a whooping on his bum. She didn’t want to hear an explanation. He had bitten back the tears while his mother cried as she hit him. After she was spent, she grabbed on to him and hugged him hard. This was when he understood that his strong mother was sometimes afraid, and this frightened him in turn.

  He didn’t think she needed to be afraid. Darren liked school and his friends and making everyone laugh in class. It was his particular talent, like the Thing. And his teachers for the most part thought he was hilarious. They told his mother in teacher-parent interviews, “Darren is a really funny kid!” and his mother would politely say thank you. Only afterward, in the car, would she smack him in the head, suck her teeth and tell him that “funny” was not what education was for.

  “But we laugh all the time at home!” he would protest.

  “You will always get your laughs at home, son. But at school, you work!”

  Then in Grade 7 he got a new teacher, a little man with bright yellow hair and a moustache who wore plaid suits. Mr. Wilson had a face that didn’t quite match Laurentian No. 14, the pencil crayon called Flesh. Darren and Nav had once had a long discussion about who did actually have skin that matched No. 14 and could only settle on one kid in the class, Tracy McTavish. Her flesh was what Laurentian had modelled the colour after, they decided. The rest of them had skin that you had to blend two or three colours together to get. Nav’s skin also had a base of No. 10 Photo Brown but shaded lightly with the pencil and with an even lighter touch of No. 1 Deep Yellow applied on top.

  Mr. Wilson was something like a No. 18 Blush Pink with a hint of No. 19 Cherry Red around the cheeks. He was strict in some ways and gave a lot of homework, but he also had a fun side that he showed through the stories he’d tell at the end of every day. He always talked about how in his hometown of Cobourg, a little town by a lake, he and his best friend, Peter, would have all kinds of adventures and get into buckets of trouble. One time, they put earthworms inside girls’ sandwiches, and in the middle of the night one year, they took screwdrivers to their school sign, so that in the morning the sign said “lover Lane Public School” instead of “Clover Lane Public School.” Darren thought Mr. Wilson was wicked smart and a significant improvement over their previous teacher, whose personality was like a used-up tea bag.

  The problem was Mr. Wilson didn’t take to Darren the way Darren had hoped. When Darren tried to crack a joke, thinking he and his teacher were on the same team, Mr. Wilson called him a distraction. The kids had always laughed when Darren did something funny in class, but after a few of these episodes, they became too scared to react. Once, Mr. Wilson got so annoyed, he put Darren in the far corner of the room and taped his legs to the chair.

  Mr. Wilson didn’t treat the other kids this harshly. Darren knew that he was not the best student in the class, but he didn’t deserve what Mr. Wilson dished out. He seemed to like the white kids just fine. Even with Damian, the dumbest one around, Mr. Wilson had absolute patience. While the other students exchanged eye rolls as Damian struggled over a simple multiplication problem on the blackboard, Mr. Wilson explained in an encouraging voice for the millionth time about moving decimals. With the other kids who weren’t white, like June and Nav, Mr. Wilson expected great things, which wasn’t hard since June and Nav almost always got good grades. The occasional time that June passed notes or was caught whispering to Josie, Mr. Wilson only expressed disappointment by sighing and saying, “June, are you finished with your social engagements and ready to join us again?” But for Darren, there was no slack. He tried to stay quiet, do his work, but no matter what, Mr. Wilson found something that wasn’t right. He even chewed Darren out for forgetting to take his baseball cap off and said Darren lacked respect.

  There was another black student in the class, Tanya, whom his mother would have described as big-boned. She hardly ever spoke, though, and most people didn’t notice her. Mr. Wilson acted like she wasn’t even there. She sat in the corner, with tight braids, and big glasses taking over her face, silent and expressionless. But once in a while, Darren saw that as she listened to the lesson or was engrossed in a book, her eyes were alive. Darren thought Tanya had a strange ability. She was so visible and yet invisible. But perhaps the ability wasn’t in her but in others. They chose to look or they didn’t.

  Darren didn’t tell his mother about how Mr. Wilson treated him, not even about the leg-taping incident, because she would get angry and say he’d brought it upon himself. She might even do what she’d been threatening to do with him for years and send him back to Jamaica. It was her home, but he’d never been there and couldn’t tell whether she loved or hated it. Almost every day, his mother told him the same thing: he had to try harder and be better than everyone else or he would be sent back home, where there was nothing for him—no school, no money, no life. Darren knew Jamaica had its problems, but he also knew it had palm
trees and coconuts and the ocean and a father—things he had never seen before and wanted to. So, in the end, maybe going there wouldn’t be so bad.

  His father occasionally appeared through letters with loopy handwriting. There would be a quick note at the bottom of letters to his mother, that read: “Dear Son, I am well. Hope you are too. Work hard for your mother. Father.” He would ask his mother to cut these sections out, and he would collect the clippings in a shoebox. She would oblige but told him not to get his hopes up. He never told his mother that he imagined his dad to be the Thing. He also thought that this father would welcome him with open arms, and that together they would fight all the mysterious forces that were wrong with Jamaica that Darren’s mother only hinted at but never explained.

  Darren knew his mother had worked hard to get them this house in this nice neighbourhood and all their nice furniture. She reminded him all the time as if he weren’t listening. But Darren was listening. He knew her story well. She came to Canada alone when she was only eighteen. She said she scrubbed enough toilets in other people’s homes to put herself through nursing school and finally landed a good job at a hospital as an emergency room nurse. Darren didn’t know how many toilets it took to pay for school, and from the time when he was very young, whenever she talked of those years, he imagined an endless row of them stretching to the horizon.

  Now, she could hold her head up high because she had a good job and all those white people needed her when they were at their weakest. In the neighbourhood, when the parents were killing themselves, she was the one who met the bodies at the hospital and gently wrapped them in sheets before delivering them to the morgue. When Darren asked her what the dead parents had looked like, she said, “Like used Kleenex.” Darren pictured a crumbled-up mess of tissue and shuddered. He thought he would never want to touch a dead person and imagined his mother’s matter-of-fact hands getting to work to wash a dead body.