by Dionne Brand
“Let’s get some dope, man. Let’s get a beer,” Ghost said.
“Sure,” he said weakly. “Sure.” He drove himself off the highway.
“Don’t punk out on me man, don’t punk out,” Ghost said. Bedri said nothing. Three hours ago that would have pissed him off, three hours ago Ghost could never have said that and got away with it, one hour ago. He felt his big self getting smaller as if he was sweating himself away. The man’s face, a small scar, a moon scar already on the cheekbone. One minute he was pounding the man’s face into the pavement, next minute he felt nauseous. How many guys had he landed his big fist on? From grade school to now. Even Ghost. He had beaten him up. All the time. When they were living raw on Gerrard Street.
Fuck that guy, fuck his face. The guy had thought he was hardcore, but Bedri made the moon scar on his face turn crimson. His father, he thought of his father. His father would say, I pay, I take shit, and look who you turn out to be. I stay in camps, I lose everything. His father loomed over him, grabbing his face, squeezing tears from his eyes. I lose everything, for you to shame me. When did his father stop saying this to him? When he, Bedri, loomed larger, made a bigger shadow over the dinner table. That was the way it was. A bigger man overshadowed a smaller man. That was all.
“Where we going, man?” Ghost grabbed Bedri’s shoulder. Bedri had steered the car down the Allen Expressway and west onto Eglinton Avenue. The rush of the highway subsided here, dismal shops blinked dimly, the dry cleaners, the wig shop, the barrel store, the patty shops, the curtained shadows of regular life moving in the apartments above.
“Montreal … Let’s go to Montreal. It’s tight there.” Ghost was still stoked; his hand on Bedri’s shoulder carried a current. Bedri felt his neck heat up from the touch. Hot moonlight, hot smoke, he thought, electric index.
“Montreal,” he repeated the word. “Montreal, yeah, maybe. It’s tight there?” There was a childish note in his voice, not the way that question should sound, sleepy and as if he was about to cry.
“Don’t fucking bring me down, guy. Let’s do this.” Ghost thumped him with an elbow. “Let’s get some gas right here, right here!” Ghost pointed to a gas station on the left.
“Okay, okay. I can see.” Bedri pulled into the station and climbed out of the car. “My father …” he said for no reason, and walked toward the street. Ghost got out and pumped gas into the tank, all the time calling Bedri from the station. “Hey. Hey, hey, B!” When he put the nozzle back into the pump he signalled to the man behind the glass in the station’s small shop that he was coming and walked toward the street. “Don’t lose it, man.”
Bedri said, “My father …”
“Nobody don’t know nothing, guy.”
He followed Ghost back to the car and waited while Ghost paid for the gas, and when he came back he said over the roof of the car, “I’m going home, Ghost. Take me home.” Ghost said nothing but got into the driver’s seat. Bedri stood outside for a moment then got in. They drove back onto Eglinton, still going west.
“My father is going to kill me.” Bedri finished the sentence he had been trying to make at the gas station. Ghost chuckled and when Bedri looked at him, Ghost raised an exaggerated eyebrow. “Just saying. He would kill me.”
Ghost sucked his teeth in disgust. “So what, guy? So fucking what.”
THREE
No misunderstandings, no embraces. No kisses, no fledgling love affair. No late nights when Jasmeet’s voice would call up to Lia begging from the street to throw the keys down. She was always forgetting or losing her keys. And Lia’s feeling of being clear and open for the first time? A casualty. Just like their meeting, their friendship, their near love. Brief.
It occurs to her that you can go to sleep at night as one person and wake up the next morning as another. It occurs to her that you can go down into the subway at Main as one person and emerge at Lansdowne another. That’s probably how Jasmeet disappeared. Simple transposition; she went away and when she tried to return she was someone else.
Lia is listening to Rudresh Mahanthappa and Bunky Green. She likes music without words. This music makes her feel ubiquitous. Bullshit she tells herself. After all, she can’t reach Jasmeet, and ubiquity would be able to help her do that. Ubiquity could find anything. She has gone by all of Jasmeet’s haunts, the Ossington galleries, the late night diner on Dupont Street, the Fusion Underground Club on Augusta. No one knows where Jasmeet is. No one’s heard from her.
This is how they met. Lia has hauled the garbage bags with her belongings up the stairs to her new room. She’s figuring out how to turn the key in the lock when the next room door opens. The smell of lavender and marijuana fills the hallway. Someone like her, like her age maybe, like twenty, except not like her, dressed like … crazy, rushes out. “Hey,” she says, glorious smile, “I’m Jasmeet, your new best friend. Can you hold these keys for me, please? I’m always losing keys.” Lia forgets her own business, drops her bags, reaches her hand to Jasmeet, takes the keys, then they both laugh. Instant.
The rent hasn’t been paid. The landlady, Mrs. Cho, knocks every day at Jasmeet’s vacant room. Lia is on the lookout for her, she listens to Mrs. Cho come up the stairs and when she knocks on Jasmeet’s door, Lia rushes out saying, Jasmeet is sick, Mrs. Cho! when Jasmeet isn’t even there. Have a little patience, she tells Mrs. Cho, have a little compassion. She fends off the landlady for quite a while with the sheer will of her expectation that Jasmeet will be back. She’ll be back, Lia tries to convince herself. A little patience is something Lia knows about, a little patience is the substance she deals in.
Hence Lia’s theory of transposition. It happened so fast; one week, two weeks, four weeks have gone by since Jasmeet left town. Lia is biking now along Bloor Street, going east, no hands, her coat is open like a sail. It’s Jasmeet’s bike. She’s keeping it. She doesn’t stop for traffic lights. Choruses of car horns follow her. At each block she becomes someone else, some other part of who she might be. One block she’s carrying flowers, one block she has newspapers. At the university she thinks of cadavers and at the museum an emptiness swaddles her. Then the naked mannequins in the posh shops embrace her at Bay. At Yonge the perennial road and construction crews offer her graves that will open annually.
Lia knows Jasmeet won’t return. Not to this spot, she won’t. So this hanging on has been really her refusal to admit her loss. It’s just that she can’t believe it. Jasmeet had called her on the way to Pearson Airport, then she’d called her from the airport before boarding the plane. And then the last call, two days and ten hours later from Cuzco. Since then, no call, no text.
It’s her own fault. Jasmeet had tried to convince her—she could have gone with her but she’s tied by the ankles to this city. Tied to her brother, Germain, and her strange mother, Mercede. So Jasmeet left. That’s not why Jasmeet left for Peru. No. She left to find a desert, she said, to find quiet, and to journey on ayahuasca. They say the desert is the quietest sound in the world, taking ayahuasca leads you to a pure-intentioned love. I understand, she’d said when she phoned from Cuzco, I don’t blame you. We all have our paths, Lia. I feel the earth breathe here, and energy, so much good energy. Your qi is blocked, Jasmeet told her, there is a negative energy hovering around you. Everyone has to love themselves. You can’t believe it here, each moment is sacred. Lia heard the desert in the ear of the cell phone. She heard the quiet that Jasmeet heard then Jasmeet rang off.
The hallway fills now with Lia’s regret. If you came to her door, you would be blown against the opposite wall with the force of this regret. Lia jitters on the doorstep of Jasmeet’s locked room, she has the keys but she doesn’t tell Mrs. Cho. So no carpenter will bring his tool belt and tool kit to the room for weeks yet. And no desperate student will view the room—the paint splatter, the unwashed dishes, the clothes on the floor mixed with hammers and paint, and fabric with globs of dried dye. All these are remnants of Jasmeet’s performance pieces, her interpretations of Oshun, the goddess o
f beauty; Kali, the goddess of wrath; Bellona, the goddess of war. Jasmeet was interested in goddesses. Jasmeet was on a path away from corporate shit, she’d said.
Needless to say Lia continues to ring Jasmeet’s cell-phone. No answer. She imagines her calls bouncing off satellites, the great telescopes of the desert, the Pleiades. She’s sent texts—after the first week: “How is it? When?” Ten days later: “If you tell me where you are …” Next, after three weeks: “Mrs. Cho freakin’ out.” She’s called Jasmeet’s parents; they become as anxious as she is. Now Jasmeet will hate her for alarming them but Lia doesn’t care. Lastly, after the fourth week: “I’ll be on the island!”
On weekends, she and Jasmeet had gone often on the ferry over the lake to Ward’s Island. She had loved the lake putting volume and distance between themselves and the city. They would walk naked, where you could walk naked, on the beach at Hanlan’s Point. Jasmeet, decadent, except for beaded strings around her waist and mehndi on her hands and feet. The last time, Lia had asked to borrow a waist string and Jasmeet had removed one and placed it around Lia’s waist. Wouldn’t it be great to live here, Jasmeet had said, and Lia agreed. Jasmeet had talked about her travels through the world so far, going to all the spiritual places. She’d already been to Varanasi, went to aarti on the ghats for five nights and bathed in the Ganges. Then she went to Rishikesh and studied the Bhagavad Gita with Swami Sivananda. It was such a relief to listen to Jasmeet. Like breathing air. She was like someone from another world. So far away from the world Lia was used to, a world full of the emergencies of a small life. Jasmeet had said these places were power places, where the magnetic fields were strongest and she could feel their sheer power pass through her, and now she wanted to go to Peru for the Mayan apocalypse. Everybody was going, she had said, and Lia should go too, to recalibrate her qi.
Mrs. Cho’s certainly wasn’t a ‘power place,’ no magnetic fields above Dundas street. The only phenomenon registering over the cracked ceilings, the cracked linoleum, the peeling paint in the hallway, is Mrs. Cho’s quarelling: These young people. Artists! Always short with the rent. They always want light fixtures fixed and toilets fixed and hallways swept. They want snow removed when it piles up at the bottom of the door. They are lazy and don’t do it themselves. They leave the door open when it snows so the snow rises one flight of stairs. They think it’s funny. Soon, soon … Mrs. Cho threatened. Ward’s Island. That’s a power place, Lia thinks. She’ll find a place there and when Mrs. Cho sells the building it will probably be replaced by a condominium, like Jameet said. They’ll wipe away any sign of Lia and Jasmeet and put hoardings up advertising tiny overpriced units.
Corporate shit, like Jasmeet said.
Lia only has small desires: like finding a first true friend, like waiting for Jasmeet to call up from Dundas Street for the keys. And for weekend nights in drum and base dance clubs, and rides on the ferry together away from the city. But mostly she wants not having life change up on her all the time. As in the life she’d had before. When they met, Jasmeet was ahead of her already. They could have been lovers. She should have gone but she didn’t. Sometimes you have to catch a feeling right away, but nothing in Lia’s life so far has made her trust this idea.
FOUR
All cities are ambiguous and not just in fog or snow or rain. There is sometimes the inability to make a thing out. Fog, here, can make the next block a mystery, snow disguises the known topography. And rain, something a poet once called the happiest of weathers, rain can make life doubtful. Anyway such is the changeability, the indefiniteness of this city, a plain day is never plain. So even though it’s summer, it’s that kind of a day in the city. In fact it’s not quite day. Everything is still perfect. June sits up in bed. She’s heard something on the radio that wakes her. “One hundred musicians?” she says. “Great!”
“Musicians? Policemen. One hundred policemen.” Sydney’s been lying beside her, awake, contemplating the highway commute. She rolls over, places her feet on the floor.
“He said musicians.”
Sydney laughs, “Sweets, you’re still asleep, dreaming.”
“Pianists, maybe then, that would make sense, I swear I heard pianists.”
“Heading to Jane and Finch?!” Sydney laughs again.
The radio’s red numbers burn the early morning dark of the room. June is positive. The radio show she wakes to every morning on CBC never fails her. It said one hundred musicians or pianists or flautists or guitarists, but definitely something to do with music.
“That’s going to be amazing.”
“Dream on. You think they’re sending anything but cops up there?”
June feels as if she’s inhaled water. God, the idea of one hundred musicians in the Jane-Finch neighbourhood! Fucking perfect. “It’s genius!” she calls to Sydney who is moving toward the bathroom.
“For crime control, June. Why the hell would they send one hundred musicians?” Sydney’s voice is slightly exasperated now. She turns back to June on the bed, just to make sure June’s not talking in her sleep. June’s hair is in sleep disarray, her hands in a splayed open gesture. June is sitting straight up and now she sounds combative, “Why not?”
“You’re kidding me, right?” Sydney only wants to go to the bathroom, shower, get on the 400 and get to work, ninety-six kilometres north, in Barrie, on time. Sydney doesn’t want an argument, especially not a ridiculous one.
“I heard, distinctly, the city’s sending one hundred musicians to Jane-Finch. You didn’t hear it, so don’t just dismiss it.”
Sydney really just wants to say, good morning, honey, and decides to say, “Good morning, honey.”
“Don’t be patronizing,” June says, “I’m only saying ‘one hundred musicians’ is what the radio said and I think it’s a brilliant idea.”
Sydney looks at her patronizingly.
“Okay, fine,” June says, “listen, they’ll repeat it, you’ll hear.”
“Honey, it’s extra police for the gangster shit up there, it’s not kindergarten.”
“Musicians,” June says emphatically. She’s intransigent now.
It’s too early. Sydney doesn’t want a fight. It’s five-thirty in the morning. The sun’s not even out yet. If it shows up at all today. There was thunder around four a.m.
Sydney remembers that once, June spent all of breakfast, the whole bloody morning, talking in Tamil. That was because the before lover was Tamil. And once, in the middle of the night June woke in Spanish. That was because of the Chilean lover in the 70s and the Nicaraguan lover in the 80s. So now these musicians. Was June seeing a musician on the side? June carries remnants of people, of things, of the world, with her. We all do, but June carries hers on the surface, her skin is iridescent with these glimpses and glances. And certainly her dreams are lustrous. Where others would filter out, June takes in. She never says who she really is though, or how she arrived in the city. Maybe she was born here, maybe not. Perhaps when she arrived she was carrying so many remnants that her true self became obscure to others. She’s vague about her past but she’s curious enough about other people’s. Sydney suspects her of polyamory but wouldn’t dare ask her. Anyway, if she did, June would say something vague or something that felt like knives and that would be the end of it. June can be vague and then again can be something like knives, and sometimes Sydney, being the lover, wants to risk all of it, like now.
“Okay, let’s listen.” Sydney sits mercilessly on the bed. Though actually another half hour can’t be wasted like this. Already cars heading north on the 400 are tight like a huddle of penguins, the 401 highway running east and west is buckling with steel and rubber megadytes, but living with June is not like living in the real world. “It’s policemen,” Sydney says resolutely.
“Musicians,” June says childishly.
Sydney is becoming intolerant. “What would musicians do?”
“Play,” June says. “Soothe the turmoil, calm the heart. Those ‘gangsters’ are children, they’re wre
cked. Music would make them happy.”
“Don’t be naive. They’re gunmen. They’re sending police for the gunmen.”
“The gunmen are children. They need music. They could use some bicycles, some painters, some soccer balls, some fucking trees. The place is pure postindustrial dreck. Who wouldn’t want to murder somebody? A hundred trees, a hundred teachers, a hundred trips out of there, a hundred anything—not a hundred policemen. Why are you so fucking pessimistic?”
Sydney has lain down and has nodded off through this bizarre dawn inventory. The word “pessimistic” pierces her senses though.
“Pessimistic! Me, I’m pessimistic! Lord, why am I having this conversation?” She springs up.
“Yes, pessimistic! Why would you say ‘one hundred policemen’?”
“I’m not saying it! He said it! The guy on the cee-bee-cee!”
“No, he didn’t. You did. What are they? An invading foreign power? For god’s sake, they’re children! They’re suicidal, nihilistic, but they are children.”
“Murderous, more like it,” Sydney says under her breath. Sydney never expected to wake up in the heat of a guerrilla war. Who does? Unless you live with June. June’s voice becomes hectoring, “You really don’t understand these things do you? Beatriz would.”
“Oh fuck, here we go with Beatriz again!” Beatriz was the Nicaraguan.
“But …?” Sydney hears a suddenly plaintive note in June’s voice but will not be taken in and bolts for the bathroom. June turns up the radio, waiting for the news.
“No imagination … none …” June is capable of this harsh tone as regards Sydney. She is ruthless when she wants to be right.
The voice begins reading the news and June raises the volume again. It says, and June unquestionably hears, “The mayor has decided to send one hundred musicians including flautists, guitarists, bassists, saxophonists, drummers and pianists to the Jane-Finch corridor of Toronto to help curb the violence in the neighbourhood. The plan was approved by City Council …”