That Time I Loved You

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

  Darren thought about his mother’s hands a lot, those hands that cupped his face when she wanted a kiss, that cared for sick people, that massaged lotion on her legs and that had touched death. Those hands were their own special colour that he couldn’t capture with the Laurentian pencil crayons. Darren imagined he would need paint to mix the perfect hue. The palms of her hands were made up of the most beautiful purples, browns, pinks and yellows. He was not afraid of those hands. He was proud of them and welcomed them even when they smacked him in the head when he was disobedient. Darren knew that all the lessons were held in his mother’s hands.

  Darren was convinced that she had worked too hard to get to where she was and would never kill herself like the others and abandon him. Darren once asked why the parents had done it. Why they had wanted to become like used Kleenex.

  “They were sad, and that kind of sadness is the worst kind of sadness,” she answered.

  “Are we that kind of sad, Mom?”

  She laughed for a long time and walked away. Darren still heard her laughing as she walked from the kitchen to the living room. Finally, he heard her voice from the other room: “Does it sound like we’re sad?” and more laughter. He knew his mother was not like those fragile parents who threw themselves like snot-filled tissue in the trash can. But he still worried about making her sad, the other particular power he seemed to have that he didn’t want. Darren dreaded the day when Mr. Wilson and his mother would meet. Because way worse than her being angry was when she was sad, especially if he was the cause of it. Still, it seemed that in her, anger and sadness came together like rivers running into each other until you couldn’t tell them apart.

  Darren felt a glimmer of hope during class one day when Mr. Wilson announced that they would take an important math test, and if they did well on it, they might qualify to be in a math competition with another area school. Darren had abandoned all hope that he and his teacher would be friends, but he started to imagine how happy his mother would be if he made the math team. The thought of it made him feel good.

  Beginning that night, he did his homework and even went ahead into the next chapter. He also started going over to Nav’s house to get help from his smart sister, Archana, who was in Grade 8. Nav’s parents took homework very seriously and made Nav and Archana do at least one hour of it every day. Normally, that would just about kill Darren. He thought he did a lot of studying too, but he’d had to make his own barometer for what “a lot” was since his mother was always at work and it was up to him to decide.

  But this math competition dangled in front of him. He wanted it. He spent a few afternoons at the Sharmas’ dining room table and studied with Nav. He loved going there; their house always smelled of curry—not like his mother’s curry, sharper, sweeter. If it weren’t for Archana, he might have spent even more time there. Unlike Nav, who was a nice kid, Archana was sour and mean. She had long, straight hair that fell down her back like an arrow, long arms and knobby limbs. Archana was the kind of skinny that would make Darren’s mother suck her teeth and want to fatten her up with some goat stew. But what she lacked in fat, Archana made up in mean. Every one of those afternoons he was over to study, she would pace behind him and Nav with a wooden yardstick as they worked at the problems she made up.

  “No talking. Don’t even look at each other!” Her voice was so serious and pretend grown-up, Nav and Darren couldn’t resist giggling.

  Whack. She cracked the yardstick on the table between them, and they shut up and went back to their problems. Nav was used to her and would smile at Darren like it was nothing, but Darren wanted to punch her in the teeth. Still, Darren knew that if he was going to get a good mark on the test, he had to do whatever skinny-mean Archana wanted, so he stuck with it.

  One afternoon following a cruel session filled with whacks that barely missed his head, he and Nav went upstairs to his room and pored over the comics. Nav was the luckiest guy in the world because his parents got copies of the comics that were delivered to their store. He had stacks and stacks of them beside his bed.

  “Do you think we’re going to do okay on that test, Nav?” Darren asked while they flipped through the latest X-Men.

  “Sure, Darren. You’re going to do great.” Nav was so shy he mostly only spoke to Darren, June and Josie. His voice was deep and coarse, not like what you’d expect from a tiny, shy boy who had big Bambi eyes. Nav was too scared to talk to Darren’s mother, but she liked him anyway. She said he was too pretty to be a boy but that he was a good influence.

  “I hope so. My mom was mad at me after the last test.”

  Nav smiled at Darren and reached over to pat him on the back. Nav sometimes seemed a lot older to Darren than he was. Only parents and teachers ever patted you like that.

  “Wilson is out to get me, Nav. I can feel it.”

  Darren tried to behave the way he thought his teacher wanted, but lately, even his breathing seemed to bother him. Darren felt like he was on permanent detention. When Mr. Wilson got irritated, he would stroke his moustache with his index finger. Sometimes Mr. Wilson made him clean the blackboard and brushes, but often he told Darren to sit quietly at his desk and do nothing. He said it would teach Darren discipline, which he clearly lacked. Darren wasn’t even allowed to read his comics while Mr. Wilson sat at his desk at the front of the room doing his teacher things, only occasionally pausing to look up at him with a cold stare. His mean wasn’t like Archana’s mean. It had a bright hue, like Hulk’s arch-enemy and nemesis the Abomination, No. 8 Emerald Green. Darren would quickly look down, pretending there was something on his nails, finding it easy to take his mother’s advice. There was no way he would look into those eyes. He might disintegrate or something.

  But in those last fifteen minutes of school, no matter what had happened during the day, Mr. Wilson would tell his stories to the class. His face would soften, and Darren watched his teacher perch on the edge of his desk to talk about his childhood adventures with his best friend, Peter. Darren had to admit he loved the stories. As much as he tried to hate his teacher, he couldn’t resist being pulled into them. It was hard to hold the two Mr. Wilsons straight, the irritated one and the sentimental one. Maybe being two entirely different people was Mr. Wilson’s secret power. Darren believed that everyone had one. And as long as Mr. Wilson didn’t call home to complain to his mother, he decided he could deal with whatever was thrown at him.

  The day after the math test, Mr. Wilson handed the tests back to the students by calling out their names. When they came up to get their papers, he said things like “Good work, Mary” or “You can do better, James.” Nav went up when his name was called, and being Nav, he stared at the ground when Mr. Wilson said, “Excellent, Naveen.” Everyone had gone up already, and finally, he called Darren. He got up excitedly, already picturing his mother finally smiling about a math test and putting it on the fridge. Maybe she would even take him to Kentucky Fried Chicken that night for a bucket.

  “Darren. Here is your test.” He held the paper in front of Darren. Darren looked at it. While there were check marks all over it, acknowledging that the answers were right, at the top it said “0.” He didn’t understand.

  “I will not tolerate cheating,” Mr. Wilson said in a low, deadly voice.

  Darren kept his eyes on the paper and tried to process his shock. “I didn’t cheat.” The words burst out of Darren as if he’d been pushed from behind. He almost went to apologize for saying them, but then he stopped himself. He was mad.

  “Yes, you did. I am sure you looked at Naveen’s paper while you wrote the test. There is no way you could have gotten a perfect score on it.” He held the paper just out of reach from Darren, not letting go even as Darren tried to take it.

  “I did not!” he shouted. He silently apologized to his mother, but Mr. Wilson was wrong. This was all wrong.

  “Did you raise your voice at me?” Mr. Wilson’s tone got even lower and nastier. If his words had been written in a comic, they would have had a
jagged bubble around them.

  “But, Mr. Wilson, I did not cheat, I swear!” Darren had carefully taken his voice down, but he thought it came out whiny.

  “That’s it. Detention. A week.”

  Darren looked back at his friends, sitting in rows with blank expressions on their faces. When he tried to catch their eyes, they all looked down at their desks. If he were to draw them, they would be heads with no faces.

  A memory flashed into his mind. The day he and his mother were walking through Agincourt Mall, eating ice cream with candy pieces in it. His mother had been picking out the candy in hers and giving it to him. Then, out of the blue, she took his hand in hers and made them stop walking. “When you grow up,” she said, “it won’t happen slowly, like it does for other kids. It will happen all at once. On that day, you will change, and you will remember that day, that moment, for the rest of your life.” They continued strolling on the shiny floor, past the arcade and Birks jewellery.

  Darren had a perfect image of that scene in his mind. The things she told him that he had half-listened to crystallized as he was standing in front of the man who had his perfect test in his hand. Darren held it all, everything he knew up to that point.

  Darren looked up to meet Mr. Wilson’s face, his small glasses perched on that nose that Darren could draw with one curved line, that moustache that was so yellow it could’ve been twisted onto a plate beside some pancakes. Chalk dust bit into his nose. Behind him, the class was tomb-silent except for some kids passing by in the hall, laughing. He lifted his eyes and locked them on Mr. Wilson’s small, hard eyes, tired brown like dusty marbles.

  Something in those eyes startled Darren. It was beyond the scope of the test, of the classroom, of what stood between them. There was no trace of kindness, not anything left over from the boy from Cobourg who had fun with his buddy. There was hardness, an unrelenting hardness. From the corner of Darren’s eyes, he thought he saw a flash of orange. It was a mix of No. 2 Sarasota Orange and No. 11 Chestnut Brown, to be precise.

  Darren took a deep breath and without breaking his stare, he told Mr. Wilson, “No.”

  Sweets

  Her English was not good, but she knew what they were asking. Their three pairs of eyes were on her granddaughter, June, who was turning red like a tomato. Poh Poh smirked and continued to throw handfuls of candy from the plastic bag onto the table. She didn’t know what June replied, but it was a long, breathless statement. Poh Poh wasn’t bothered. She was used to it.

  She wondered what the four children saw. She bet they had never seen the likes of her. She looked at her hands, speckled, fingers crooked as she threw their treasured sweets into the centre of the table. She was old, but she was still strong, and she made a point of tossing the candy hard, so that some of it bounced off the surface and clattered to the linoleum floor. Her hair was white and cut back to the scalp. Her broad, flat back was curved like a crane’s. She was dressed in her standard black pants and black sweater. Never makeup. Nails short and square. She felt the children looking her up and down and wondered what parts of her they thought were woman, what parts man? She wondered why it was so important that they always had to know. But she knew they wondered. She knew they cared.

  When she first arrived in this country, all Poh Poh wanted to do was lie in her soft bed, eat sweets and feel her body spread large. She liked to let the candy melt slowly until it became a tiny heart on her tongue that she could crack apart with her teeth. She wanted to be left alone to think of nothing in this nothing place where you could walk and walk for hours but never arrive anywhere new. There were the same houses, the same colourless faces of the gweilos, the squat supermarkets.

  For many years after her husband died, she made money managing the dried goods store in Hong Kong so she could send her daughter overseas for school. The day came when her daughter, Mei, thought it was time that she repaid her poor old mother by bringing her to her adopted country and making her live there for the rest of her days. Poh Poh knew what this was—her last showdown. She had been brought here to be coddled, to be given blank time until she grew completely dependent on her daughter, and then, quietly, she would die. This was the filial duty, and all the neighbours in Hong Kong had been envious of this obedient and loving daughter bringing her to Gum San, the promised land where the skies were bluest. She knew her daughter wanted her to have a good death after a life of sweat, hustle and hardness. Mei expected her mother to go soft in all the right places. She thought her mother would appreciate the tranquility. Sometimes Poh Poh wondered if this daughter of hers ever knew her at all.

  Poh Poh bit her sharp tongue because she saw how hard her daughter tried—the pull at the corners of her mouth, her eyes becoming glossy when Poh Poh snapped at her to leave her alone. Poh Poh saw especially her daughter’s false cheerfulness. Mei made everything sound like a party. “Ma, isn’t this the biggest grocery store you’ve ever seen? And so clean! Not like the wet markets in Hong Kong. See how everything is so organized? Look at the colour of the corn!” and “Ma, see how wide the roads are here? So much space and never a traffic jam! We don’t ever have to be late here! Everyone is always early!” and “Ma, doesn’t the washing machine clean so well? The clothes always smell so good, huh? Like lemons! Who thought clothes could smell like fruit?”

  Poh Poh had arrived in the winter, which was a cruel joke in and of itself. When she finally donned all the gear Mei had bought for her and went outside by herself to examine this place her daughter thought so highly of, she slipped and fell on a patch of ice, and her daughter chastised her. Her daughter said she could have broken a leg. No more walks, she decreed. Mei fussed and cooed with too much worry, too much talk. Volume turned too high. Poh Poh returned to her room and nursed her bruised knee, wanting to shut Mei’s voice out. She watched the afternoon matinees on TV to pass the time. Old westerns. Shoot-’em-ups. She knew them all.

  After the first month of Poh Poh lying in her bed, Mei suggested that she knit. Poh Poh sneered. She didn’t want to knit. She had never knitted and never would. Mei asked her to teach June how to read and write in Chinese. She was no teacher. Her daughter gave her instructions on how to live, what to wear to the mall (the ugly blue shoes with cheap rubber soles), what apples to buy at Dominion (Never the green ones. Too sour. Pick the ones with little feet on them. They were called Dee-li-shush for good reason), how to answer the phone (“Hello? Not home. Call later.”) She was her daughter’s child now.

  Mei wanted her to think everything was perfect, and if only she would let her guide her, her mother would see that too. But Poh Poh didn’t think this place was so perfect—grass grew everywhere in summer like a rash, and snow piled high in the winter. These people were servants to the seasons, always turning on sprinklers and lawnmowers, or stooping over to shovel snow or rake leaves. So much wasted energy.

  One night in the summer, when they sat in the backyard on hard outdoor chairs, Mei told her that some people had killed themselves on the street two years before she came. Her daughter told her in hushed tones, as death was not something to talk about out loud. It came as no surprise to Poh Poh. People killed themselves and each other all the time in Hong Kong. Did these people think that having perfect grass all over the place would change that kind of anger?

  Poh Poh watched her westerns, listened to Cantonese opera, read the Hong Kong gossip magazines that her daughter bought in Chinatown when they were already a month old. She made rice and side dishes while her daughter and her husband were at work, and napped until the household came home for dinner.

  In the afternoons, June and her friends came home from school and broke the quiet like a window. At the same time every day, Poh Poh could hear the four storm in. They threw their piles of coats and bags on the floor. Their shoes and boots left puddles and streaks of mud. Their lunch boxes smelled sour. They would always follow June to the fridge for milk and snacks. When it was nice outside, they would return to the street and play in a noisy riot with the other child
ren. When it was raining or too cold, they huddled around the television in the living room, and their voices and laughter drifted to Poh Poh’s room upstairs. She would grumble to herself that her granddaughter was a disrespectful wretch.

  At the beginning, Poh Poh did not have much to say to this foreign granddaughter. Poh Poh disliked her. June spoke in another language entirely that was not Cantonese and no English she’d ever heard. The girl demanded to eat dinner in front of the TV. She giggled when things were not funny. She spoke back to her parents, and they did nothing but shake their heads. Poh Poh had told Mei that if it were up to her, she would smack June with an open hand if she disrespected her in such a way, but Mei was horrified. “Things are different here, Ma,” she said, before fleeing the room. Poh Poh was old enough to know her daughter was wrong. Things and people didn’t change. This place may have been bland as a bowl of plain rice, but in essence, in its operation, it was like any other, and so were the people.

  Poh Poh, not wanting to attempt the sidewalks again during the winter, had become a squirrel, collecting bags of chocolate bars and hard candies throughout the warm months, hoarding enough of them to last her through that next winter. Each afternoon, alone in her room, she would take out her false teeth, close her eyes, and suck the sweets slowly. This smallest pleasure was enough to get her through the day.

  Poh Poh couldn’t figure out how June knew she had the stash or where to find it, but she did and managed to ruin all of Poh Poh’s hard work in one afternoon. Poh Poh had woken to hear June rifling through her things, but she kept her back turned to the wall and pretended to be asleep. She heard June click the closet door closed, tiptoe out and then run down the stairs with her elephant feet. Then Poh Poh heard the muffled snickering in the kitchen and the sickening thump of all the sweets being dumped on the table. She was furious. If only she could have slapped June and berated her in front of her friends. That would have taught her a lesson about stealing.