Love Enough

by Dionne Brand

  Emerging from the alley, the dealer and his clients had noticed the movement. Now they looked at her, lazily. She had pried into their private life, and now they were having a look at hers. Not interested enough to stay and judge, they hurried in the next direction themselves.

  TWELVE

  Bedri’s knuckles were a faint violet. The veins of his eyes were violet too. He could smell violet when he pushed the door open and saw his sister.

  His sister worked in a hair store. Whenever Bedri went to see her, he opened the door laughing and after that he could never get more than half of what he wanted from her. If only he could control his laughter, he knew, Hela would feel sorrier for him and give him what he asked of her, but he couldn’t help himself. The hair store on Weston Road was tiny. Packets of hair in plastic wrap hung from the ceiling. The ceiling was so low in the store that the packets of hair hanging from it gave him the sense of being at a taxidermist’s, though there were no bodies, no heads attached to the scalps. He couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity. His sister herself wore variations of these packets. Sometimes Hela wore Indian hair, sometimes Korean, sewing it into her scalp. Sometimes the hair was red, sometimes black. He asked her if she wasn’t afraid of some disease or injury to her brain. He told her she would probably go bald if she wasn’t careful.

  This time he didn’t laugh walking in. Hela was with a customer, a girl with long tiger-striped fingernails. He kept his violet bruised hand in his pocket, wiping his face with the other. He tried to act like a customer until his sister was finished and her customer left with three packets of hair. Hela picked up her purse and he wished that she hadn’t. He read himself in that gesture. He usually came here for money, sometimes fighting her for it, grabbing her purse and running out. He saw their childhood and who he wished he had been to her, someone to count on instead of someone who always asked for money. He stood dejected.

  Hela dug in her purse. She was grateful that he hadn’t made a scene as he usually did, losing her a good sale. She brought out a small knot of money and simply held it out toward him, without blame, without love. She wanted him to leave quickly. He saw this. He wanted to stay. He wanted to have her want him to stay. He grabbed the money with his free hand failing and failing at finding a way to say, “Let me stay, Hela.” No way he could say that in a pure unviolent way. A way without bruises. He left the store, stood outside for a few seconds looking at her through the glass front. She went back behind the counter. He saw relief on her face. She looked out, sensing she was being watched but he was gone. He was down the street near the traffic lights when he heard his name, his boy name, called—Qualbiwanagoow! Goodhearted One!—the name they all called him until he objected to it when he turned fourteen. The sound of it now filled him with hopefulness. And the sight of Hela waving him toward her made him run back like a boy, like a good-hearted one. She had heard him, she had heard him even if he hadn’t said it. Let me stay, Hela. His injured hand bounced in his jacket pocket but the pain was nothing to him—his older sister was calling him back. When he got to her Hela said, “Don’t go to Ma’s work. She’ll get fired if you do.” She said it with venom, and thrust another knot of money toward him. He backed away from her and the money fell onto the pavement. She bent to pick it up and he turned and walked back from where he’d come. Qualbiwanagoow! Goodhearted One! Qualbiwanagoow! Goodhearted One! He heard her calling him again but he didn’t turn around.

  His family was afraid of him, he thought, and that made him sad and desperate. He should go to Montreal with Ghost. He should disappear from them altogether. They would like that, he thought. His hand hurt again. Maybe it was broken. He pulled it out of his pocket. The violet had turned to blue. The second finger could not bend, the wrist, the whole hand was swollen. It hurt but it seemed to belong to someone else. The pain was big and dull and the more he looked at the hand the more foreign it seemed. He came to a bus stop and something made him hold his hand out for the people standing there to see. He reached the hand out to a girl with round white earphones. She didn’t understand, brushed him away and turned back to her music. He paused, rebuffed, as if he had expected her to hold it. The two other people at the bus stop moved to a place away from him. He stood for a while, his hand still outstretched, then he turned and began running down the street with his hand extended.

  He ran full out down Weston Road. He could hear a blue sizzling, a sound like twigs lit and crackling as he ran. He felt as if he was a fire burning through air. And he ran making sure the fire kept going until all the twigs were burned.

  He didn’t stop for the traffic light. He only saw his hand out in front of him, and then a school bus skittering alongside him seemed to disintegrate in speed. They were both speeding, he and the school bus, and now he felt like laughing. The school bus stopped but he didn’t and he ran across the intersection at Jane without looking. It was a wide street. He ran over the middle verge and he noticed grass and a paper carton and then more asphalt. A red car went around his legs and a grey car rode on his left shoulder. The big lemon face of a semi-truck trailer came toward him and he dodged it and he heard a curse as if from underwater. A car drew alongside, blowing its horn. He followed his hand moving ahead of him. His feet were light and even in his heavy shoes he felt so very light. The Audi glided beside him like a small lake beside a highway. He felt like the highway, slender and fast. The horn from the Audi fluted. He heard shouting from a bird flying by, or a small plane. A plane, he decided, hovering to pick him up. He thought if he could get his hand up in the air he would be taken up, but he couldn’t reach. He kept running and the lake beside him moved along with him. It was grey like an Audi, and rippling.

  Weston Road wound its way before him and his legs began to melt. He thought they were burnt away and he felt sick to his stomach. He stopped and leaned over, vomiting. The lake slowed beside him. He heard Ghost’s voice saying something and he tried to put his hands to his ears.

  “You’re freaking out, man! You’re tripping!”

  Tripping, tripping, he heard, but he wasn’t tripping, he was falling, he was tumbling in pain.

  “Man up, Money.”

  He heard “man” and he straightened his upper body and ran at the Audi, kicking it.

  “Blood! Blood! Blood, come! Let’s go!” Ghost sounded wounded, beseeching, and Bedri opened the door and got into the lake. They sat in silence for a few minutes. The lake water lapped around them. Then Ghost said, “Let’s roll man, let’s roll.”

  “Whatever,” Bedri said, not hearing himself say, “Whatever,” but thinking he said, “Fuck, help!”

  Ghost laughed and Bedri said, “What is so funny, I said help.” And Ghost heard, “What the fuck you laughing at, I said roll.”

  All the way along Weston, they misheard each other that way. The car floated and Ghost put the music on, Bedri turned it off. They did this all afternoon. The car is a vault and they are locked in it with themselves and all the jewellery of their gloominess and their aimlessness. The steering wheel is gritty with sweat and dirt and the grist from their hands mixed with the grist of the guy he beat up—his mouth and face—all this damage is like gold dust to them. The CD player is playing Gnarls Barkley and they’re singing the part about the echo and space.

  On the back seat of the Audi now is Ghost’s coat. There’s no money in it, or not a lot. Lia had given him the coat and he thinks he’d better keep it because he’ll probably never see his sister again. At least, not for a long time. In the trunk there’s one side of a shoe that belongs to Ghost’s mother. Ghost is keeping it. It’s from Mercede’s best pair and he took one side just to piss her off. It lies there like a bearer bond in the vault.

  Bedri squeezes his eyes shut and open, he thinks they’re swollen too. His hand is stiff and he pulls it from his coat pocket and notices that it is wrapped around the money Hela gave him. The money looks like newspaper or a subway transfer, or a receipt from a store and not at all like money. His coat is grungy and makes him hot an
d he gingerly takes it off, pulling the right sleeve gently over his wounded hand. He throws the coat in the back seat on top of Ghost’s and notices a juice box, but then it looks like a brick and then like a metal bar. There’s also a chocolate wrapper with a half eaten chocolate next to the metal bar, and there’s a roach smoked halfway down. He sees a feather coming through the nylon threads of his jacket, a small grey feather and when he looks closer he thinks he can make out the bird it’s attached to—a small grey bird. “There’s a bird in the back seat,” he says, picking up the roach and squeezing the lighter into the socket of the car. Ghost sucks his teeth, pulls out the lighter and passes it to him.

  “You are soooo tripping, Money, where were you running to?”

  Bedri lit and sucked on the roach. He knew the bird was there. He could see with the back of his head, the bird working its way out of the material of the jacket. He held his breath trying to make much of the residue of weed in the roach. The bird skitters out making a flittering sound, a sound with an “f” and a “z” in it. He passed the roach to Ghost who took it and sucked the rest of the residue out. “That’s good,” Ghost says from his clenched nostrils.

  “Don’t open the window, the bird will fly out,” Bedri says. Ghost sputters out the thin smoke laughing. The bird z’ed and f’ed in the air of the back seat. It is loud even though Ghost doesn’t hear it, but Bedri does. It’s a small grey bird with a yellow triangular beak and blue feet.

  It’s still afternoon outside the car, the time of afternoon when schools are just out and kids are bumbling around on the pavements, running around each other with knapsacks on their backs. “Let’s go,” Bedri says, suddenly nostalgic with the scenes of shouting and running.

  “Montreal?” Ghost asks.

  “Yeah,” Bedri says, “But don’t open the window, the bird’ll get out.” Ghost is silent in case Bedri changes his mind. Then he says, “Wicked,” and turns the car toward an artery of the city leading out.

  “A brother is like one’s shoulder,” Bedri says and leans his heavy head on Ghost’s shoulder. There is a momentary quiet. Even the bird went still. And the stillness is empty. Empty like something good. Like open time. Like if time opened an empty room. That’s what Ghost is thinking. He would like to sit in an empty room and he would like his body to be scarless and he would like his mind to be empty with maybe a lake in it, a cool huge lake, one with small waves, way up north and far away from the city. Wasaga Beach where he went one time with Nonna and Nonno and Lia. Mercede was there too, he remembers. He walked very far out and the lake was still only at his small waist. He looked around himself and there was only water.

  Bedri’s heard this many times. A brother is like one’s own shoulder. His father says it. His father wanted him to be more like his cousin, Ghedi, Khat-eater. Obedient. If he could he would, but he was never sure what his father meant by obedient. His father would make a series of grunts followed by a series of sayings that sounded like orders Bedri couldn’t understand or carry out. Ghost understands him better than his father. He lifts his head, the Audi passes under a bridge, he opens his mouth to repeat his father’s imprecations. One cannot count on riches. A coward is full of precaution. He who does not shave you does not cut you. They come to his head, his memory, but not to his mouth. His mouth remains open but quiet. The bird noise comes back. The bird wants to be let out, it flutters against the windows. He doesn’t want it to hurt its wings. He opens his window, it beats against his eyebrow and flies off. Another bridge goes over the car. It looks to him as if the bird flew under it.

  It is difficult to leave the city at certain times. The traffic hurrying out from three to eight p.m. is terrible, but the Audi will do its best, it will do all it can to take them where they want to go—Montreal, wherever. It heads for the highway.

  THIRTEEN

  There are twenty-four house sparrows living on a small shelf on the right side of June’s house. In books, she has noticed these birds are mostly described as dun-coloured. She has watched them very closely. Small, quick birds, various declensions on brown and black and sand, flecks of red and even yellow, but if you were insensitive you would say dun. They are not ostentatious, these birds, but they have a nice sound. The new neighbours put up two bird feeders in their backyard and so, recklessly, according to June, increased the population of birds. Before that, there were nine house sparrows. She had made do with a cherry tree and a blackberry patch and a back and forth battle with the birds about the fruit. That was how it should be. A balancing act, not, in her opinion, an infantilizing of nature. She remarked to the neighbours that they were creating a false economy in the backyard. What would happen when they went away in the summers? What, when they forgot to replenish the bird feeders? This dependency they were encouraging was typical of liberals, she told them, it was maudlin and superior. Even the birds sensed the neighbours’ insincerity, they did not nest in their walls but remained at June’s. But having calculated the food supply as abundant, their rate of pregnancy had increased.

  Actually, she thought, human beings operated in the reverse, decreasing as their well-being increases. Oh well, so much for drawing parallels. But each previous summer, she would find a dead baby bird or two tossed out of the nest. The house sparrows did not seem to tolerate any but the sturdiest and most aggressive babies. So that parallel might be true for human beings in the city: children seemed to be larger each year, puffed out on growth chemicals in processed food, and more callous and superficial too.

  Hiking boots, socks, batteries, vitamin B … June was making a mental list for the weekend camping in Algonquin Park, not something she liked to do, and did only because of Sydney. The neighbours’ Jeep was idling in their garage at the back. June hated when they did that. Carbon monoxide. They were packing, she noticed, tent, chairs, canoe. She hoped they weren’t going to the same place as she and Sydney. Then it struck her, who would feed their birds? She flew out to the backyard and shouted across the fence, “So, who is going to feed your birds while you are away?”

  “We …” They both said “we” at the same time. They hadn’t meant to answer her, let alone together. They were a couple and the man continued, “We left enough food.” June hates the couple—heteronormativity was engraved on their foreheads.

  “They are not pets. This is exactly what I warned you about.”

  “What?” the woman said.

  “Eco-paternalism,” June said, “You’ve created this bullshit and now you’re stepping away as if they’re your pets and you’re leaving them with the neighbour. With me.”

  “Look, June, give it a break,” the woman yelled and went on packing the back of their Jeep.

  The neighbours did not return for the next three weeks. The forlorn birds hung about surveying the bird feeders. June refused to lift a finger hoping the neighbours would never return so the world of the garden could find its balance again. But of course, she thought angrily, she now had to live with the knowledge of the situation all around her. The neighbours had upset the ecological balance and now famine would occur. They had changed the tastes of the sparrows, substituted some industrial chemical diet for the natural one, purely, on their whimsy. They fed the sparrows on whimsy. Whimsy, whimsy, whimsy, June repeated to herself. This for June was the worst kind of selfishness and superiority disguised as empathy.

  June disliked starlings. They sought each day to displace the sparrows. She did not like their twitter or their sharp yellow predatory beaks. And she had no appreciation for their multi-coloured glistening feathers, at once green, blue, red, gold and black. She understood they lived in a communal nest that could take over an attic. This would otherwise be admirable to her as the phenomenology of socialism but she hated the aggression of starlings. If the neighbours decimated the sparrows with their goodwill and their fast-food bird feed, June knew the starlings would move in. One act always sets a whole array of acts in motion. In retrospect what begins innocently enough, without thought, compels a certain disaster.
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br />   A misanthrope, though she thought of herself in quite opposite terms. She found most people cruel despite their stated intentions; most people in the city thrashed about getting this and that without thinking of the consequences, she believed, even though most of them thought they were good people. Like starlings. More and more now, over this summer, the sound of sparrows would be replaced by the sound of starlings. This is in the summer of course. One thing the winter can be counted on for is stasis. Lovely stasis.

  Sydney was June’s first lover without a cause. No political talk except June’s, no meetings except June’s, nor urgent phone calls except June’s.

  Nothing like Beatriz all those years ago. Though there was never any question of Beatriz being permanent. Beatriz could not bear the English language, and her whole life was waiting for her in Estelí. But had there been a question, let us say there was a chance she might have stayed longer, it would have been nuclear between them. In the short months of Beatriz’s appearance in the city, only her life, with its secrets, mattered. She whispered gutturally into telephones, she checked hidden notes, she made calculations and her whole body was like a bit of reddened coal. At the time June did not expect more than that; Beatriz was clearly passing through and this explosive impermanence was precisely what June wanted at the time. Not love but the fissive encounter, the intense ideas and intense sex and the hypersense that every moment was atomic and defining. Of course one cannot live at that pitch forever, though naturally one wants to.

  Sydney was a breath of fresh air. Something to be said for that cliché, June said aloud. Sydney went to work in the mornings, did the minimum at a consumer retail clearing company, knowing reflexively, instinctively—whereas June only knew it analytically—that the working class was exploited and she should not do too much to increase the wealth of the corporate class. Sydney could not wait to get out of work, get back on Highway 400 and call June to start up their real life every evening. Life began for Sydney after five, and that meant dinner and movies and wine and dancing on Fridays and Saturdays, and sex without fail all day Sunday, and anytime in between, including just before work in the mornings. Especially before work in the mornings, because how else to pass the day talking on the phone trying to sell useless things to people who wanted to buy useless things, like satellite radios, for listening to the useless radio playing, over and over again, useless songs. Sydney took the boredom of selling for granted.