Boy Lost in Wild

by Brenda Hasiuk

  I steal a glance at your handsome face, all dark lashes and full lips, the kind women become fools over.

  You stare blankly, unreadable. A true lady-killer, like your uncle. “What?”

  “Nothing,” I say. “I’m not allowed to look at you?”

  The next morning, your two sisters are still sleeping but your sneakers are already on. You’ve made yourself something called a smoothie, and I know you’d mock me for calling your footwear the wrong thing. Trainers—you’re already up, in your trainers, not one to let summer vacation slow you down. You’re such a hard worker, so single-minded in your goals, I don’t know what I did to breed such an achiever. It’s as if all I had to do was not stand in your way, and yet now, on this flawless summer morning, I want to stop you and make you listen.

  I was older than you, I’d say, already engaged to your mother, in fact, when I met her. She hung around the campus, literally, not a student but a hanger-on, bumming food and cigarettes from those whose parents were footing their tuition bills. I was aware of her for some time, but without ever actually encountering her. She was widely known as “Gypsy Joan,” because of her flowing skirts and untidy hair, and because she asked people to call her that. She was fair, though, pale blue eyes like robin’s eggs, hair as yellow as that of a cartoon princess. She was what you might call a fixture on the scene, a point of interest, someone who did not belong but who was always there. I rarely gave her a second thought.

  But all that changed one late spring afternoon, when the last of the snow was finally giving up the ghost. I know, I know, it sounds like a cliché that it happened in April, but some things only become trite because they are common. I had just finished an English exam, my worst subject, which you might find surprising, since I’m such a reader now. But my brothers and I had been groomed for the sciences and it was a fine line to study the novels just enough to get top marks, but not so much that they’d take away from what really mattered.

  I’d written my second essay on Crime and Punishment and was crossing the lawn between Fletcher Argue Hall and the student commons, checking if I’d spelled the protagonist’s name correctly (no: it is Raskolnikov, not Raskalov), when I nearly tripped over her feet. She’d kicked off her shoes and was lying amongst the still-bare charcoal trees, on her back on the brown grass in only a light cotton dress, twirling a cigarette in her stick-like fingers.

  I apologized, though I had no reason to. She was lying directly in a shortcut frequented by students late for class.

  “Do you have a light?” she asked.

  I feigned ongoing absorption in my Russian book, kept on walking. “Don’t smoke.”

  “Wait!” she called.

  Now, I have no idea to this day why I turned back to her. I had an inkling that young men spoke of her as an easy conquest, a free spirit who wasn’t above trading on her obvious appeals. I knew your mother would be transferring to this very campus in the fall and had no interest in her hearing any lurid rumours when it came to her future husband. Maybe it was the Russians. Or the spring cliché. Or perhaps it had always been in me, this turning back despite myself.

  She bent her knees, did a sit-up and folded in on herself. I suppose anything’s possible in a loose cotton dress. “What’s your name?”

  The sun was in my eyes, but I spoke to the small ball of girl on the grass. “Raj.”

  She laughed, ear still resting on her bony knee. “Of course it is. You look like a Raj.”

  I had no clue what she meant by this, other than I was Indian and I had a stereotypical Indian name. Even then, I was a little pudgy and was known to slouch beneath my backpack, so there was absolutely nothing regal about my bearing.

  “Straighten up, for goodness’ sake,” your mother would say to me in those days. “With that long neck you’ll end up looking like a turtle by middle age.”

  And it’s true, your mother’s reminders have kept me from such a fate. Today, I have better posture than many men half my age.

  I tucked the novel in my jacket pocket and utterly surprised myself by saying: “And yours?”

  Bathed in backlight, she kicked her legs out straight, and though I could barely see her eyes, I could make out tiny blonde hairs shining on her deathly pale skin. “My name?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Don’t you know it?”

  She was good at this, reeling you in and throwing you off.

  “Yes, I suppose.”

  “Then why did you ask?”

  I shrugged, maybe for the first time in my life. My mother thought it a disrespectful gesture. “To be polite,” I said.

  She laughed again, high and girlish, slightly forced. “That’s lovely. I like that, Raj. Just being polite.”

  I know now that I am never a half-hog person. I only go whole-hog, as they say. What else can explain what I did next? “I just finished my most unpleasant exam. Would you like some tea, or something?”

  She stood then, took two steps towards me, out of the sunlight and into the shade of a mighty old elm trunk, and it’s then I really noticed the robin’s egg eyes and princess hair. “Really? Just to celebrate? That’s lovely. You’re lovely, Raj.”

  “Raj. It’s 8:20. What are you doing there?”

  Your mother is downstairs now, looking rounder but still beautiful in her burnt orange pantsuit. I tease her that she shops at the Health Care Administrator Fashion Outlet.

  “Yes, yes,” I say, making no move to get up from the table. “I’m hazy this morning. Can’t seem to get going.”

  She grabs a breakfast bar, pours coffee into a thermos mug. Your older sister got me one for Christmas but I don’t dare tell her that it works too well and I’ve burnt my tongue numerous times.

  “Should he be out there running?” she asks, “before we know what’s going on?”

  But she’s practically out the door before I can answer, seems content to plant a seed of worry and bugger off.

  “You know you’re being irrational,” I yell after her. “You’ll make the boy anxious for nothing.”

  You’re still gone when I must leave or miss my first appointment. It’s the grandchild of an acquaintance, who has never been quizzed while staring through a beastly metal head, and I’ll have to be my charming best.

  But one more thing before I go, because you’ll scarcely believe it of your father. As we walked towards the cafeteria, Gypsy Joan and I, it became clear that the back of her cotton dress was soaked through, a victim of early spring melt, and so I draped my jacket over her shoulders. She hugged it tight, as if afraid it might run away, and laughed. “You are lovely, Raj. Truly and really lovely.”

  It was as if no one had ever offered to buy her tea before.

  “The lab call?” you ask.

  You wake me from a nap and I start with a shuddering huff, just like my father used to. I’d been dreaming of the girl with the mutt and the kibble sign. “A few coins,” she’d said to me. “Aren’t you rich now, Raj?” It’s not hard to see what my subconscious is doing. I’ve gone through periods where I dream of Gypsy Joan often, but don’t make too much of it. I also dream of your mother’s younger sister in Toronto.

  I put on my glasses, check the time as if it’s relevant—shortly after eight in the evening. Two days since we visited your uncle. “Not yet,” I say. “But don’t sweat it. If it was something serious, they’d call ASAP.”

  “I know,” you say, already turning away, as if I’ve insulted you. “I just asked.”

  Hold on, I want to say. Or maybe freeze, mister, like your mother and I used to say when we meant business. But you’re not reaching for the sharp knife your mother has set aside after chopping coriander. You’re simply turning away from me.

  Why would you care about your old man’s lusty reminiscences? But that was not all, not by a long shot. That afternoon, over tea, Gypsy Joan and I talked for three hours and I was late for your grandmother’s hallowed supper hour.

  “So Raj, are you Hindu? she asked. “Do you worship co
ws, and little elephant statues, and dream of bathing in the polluted Ganges?”

  For some reason, I was not offended in the least. Perhaps it was the way she said it, with such energy and enthusiasm—her legs were crossed and her tiny foot bounced the whole time, as if keeping rhythm to some inner beat. She acted as if meeting a real Hindu would be the highlight of her month.

  I smiled indulgently. “I’m not terribly religious. My family has always been great believers in a democratic, secular India.”

  She nodded solemnly, and I was instantly sorry. It’s true, I can make your mother laugh by doing an excellent imitation of her father, but I’ve never been particularly good at keeping things light and fun. Gypsy Joan’s pale face did not suit solemnity.

  “Still,” I said, “after death, I’m hoping to come back as rich lady’s lapdog.”

  She clapped her hands and laughed and the pinky hue returned to her cheeks. It was enough to spur me on. “What about you? What’s with the name? Where did it come from?”

  She leaned forward as if imparting a great and eternal secret. “Well, I’m a gypsy and my name is Joan, so there you have it.”

  “But surely you’re not gypsy,” I said. “You look classically Nordic. Swedish, maybe, or Icelandic.”

  She wagged her finger at me. “Aah, don’t be so narrow-minded. I’m a gypsy by choice and surely that counts for something.”

  Her small breasts were bare beneath the thin cotton and I tried to keep my eyes on her bony hands cradling the teacup. For some reason, I had a hard time looking into those eyes, as if I might disappear into their blue horizon.

  But I know what you’re thinking. By the time you were twelve, you’d seen plenty of gypsies in the streets of Europe—family vacation stops in Paris, Venice, Rome while on our way to the South Asian seas. It had troubled you, Jagat, for quite some time to see the filthy children peeing on the cobblestones, the bent-over old women moaning in the streets, begging in foreign tongues. Your brand new point-and-shoot camera was plucked right from your jacket pocket by a little gypsy girl pretending to let you pet her mangy cat.

  “Why are they like that, Papa?” you asked me. “What’s the matter with them?”

  I bought you another camera, tried to brush off your questions as best I could. “It’s the way they’ve always lived,” I said. “Some things are very difficult to change.”

  I didn’t bother lecturing you the way I did that poor perky-nippled young girl over afternoon tea. In our family, if you knew something special, it was meant to be shared, your listener imparted with whatever wisdom you had to offer. And I just so happened to know a little something about gypsies, since my sister had recently written a history paper on migration in Eastern Europe.

  Actually, the gypsies now like to be referred to as Roma, I told her. We now know they emigrated from India well over a thousand years ago, probably members of a low caste with few opportunities. I also mentioned that the Roma culture was profoundly patriarchal, with young girls known to marry before their fourteenth birthdays.

  She took a bite of my half-eaten apple cruller, and then shoved the rest against my moving lips.

  “Okay, yes,” she interrupted. “They also go where they want, when they want, and they don’t give two shits what you think of them.”

  I took hold of her hand to push it away, but instead, I too took a bite of pastry. Then she fed me another, and another, until my mouth was surrounded by a ring of sticky sugar which she brushed away with her pale, bony hand.

  Then she sucked on her index finger and gazed at me. “Roma Raj,” she said. “That’s what we’ll call you. Introducing The Lovely Roma Raj.”

  Your mother fusses over you to deflect her worry, preparing your favourite meals, buying you the overpriced trainers you had your eye on, while she takes out her anxiety on me.

  “It’s been four days,” she says. “Call Mehta. Ask him how long it usually takes.”

  “I refuse to get worked up over this,” I say. “If it was serious, we’d know, and since it’s not, we can wait.”

  “He’s your brother,” she says. “Just call him.”

  Perhaps she senses my betrayal, senses I’m somewhere else where she has no business. Over the course of our whole marriage I’ve never indulged in such extramarital musings except in dreams, and now, when our only son, our shining star, is in mortal peril, I’m adrift. But you see, Jagat, it’s not that I don’t care. It’s that I can’t seem to shake this thing I must share with you, somehow, somewhere.

  I go over how things played out while soaping up my chest in the shower. Gypsy Joan said she was looking after an apartment for a sessional lecturer, a big old tumbledown beauty by the legislative building. I have no idea what the real story was, but that’s where we went. I can count on two hands the number of times she led me up the ample marble stairs, down those wide hallways that reminded her of a bowling alley, and into her “flat,” as she called it, like the British, with its useless fireplace mantel and wall sconces in the shape of Victorian candles. But I can still hear the distinct marble echo of those hallways, smell the mix of decaying wood and other people’s dinners. There was something melancholy about the place, at one time its central location catering to up-and-coming politicians, lawyers, doctors, and now offering cheap rent for down-on-their luck sessional lecturers clamouring for the few tenure-track positions available.

  “Isn’t it grand?” she asked. “She’s away until June and it’s all mine until then.”

  I felt ashamed I’d assumed the place belonged to a he. “Then what?” I asked. “Where do you usually live?”

  She flopped down on an uncomfortable-looking futon and kicked her feet into the air. Her knees were as bony as Pippi Longstocking’s, the tiny Swedish heroine as strong as an ox I used to watch on Saturday mornings. Do you know Pippi, Jagat? No, of course you don’t. She was only a child but lived by herself in a colourful old mansion with a spotted horse named Old Man and a monkey named Sir Nielson, eating all the candy she wanted, engaging in crazy adventures, and saving the day with her feats of daring and strength while her papa sailed the seven seas.

  “Here and there,” Gypsy Joan said. That night, the spring weather had gone on hiatus and it was chilly beneath the high ceilings. Her nipples stood at attention beneath the cotton dress. “I always find something.”

  I’m not sure how experienced you are, son. They say your generation begins so young, but when would a boy like you have time? You seem absorbed by your track and your basketball and your science projects and your computer games where you build worlds. I too was innocent even for my time. I came from a more traditional culture. You’ve never asked, but your sisters have, they go on about it, about how your mother’s and my marriage was arranged by our families. We had a say, of course, we could decide if we liked each other, if it seemed to suit us; our families were educated people, after all. But I was innocent physically, and Gypsy Joan and I did not go to bed until the last time we met, after I’d had time to fall in love.

  I know it sounds ludicrous, but I can assure you it’s true. She did not drink, but she smoked pot, and for hours upon hours, while she toked and I ate microwave popcorn out of the bag, we talked of haphazard things and I fell in love with the dancer’s arch of her pale, bouncing foot, the way her brow knitted together when she was thoughtful, a habit that would surely leave lines in her blonde girl forehead by the time she was middle-aged. But I loved even the thought of that, for she seemed so eager to drink in all I said, so full of piss and vinegar and Pippi-like fun, that it was as if she became ageless for me—a gap-toothed urchin, an alluring young filly, a wizened old woman.

  I talked of India, of its ancient, festering castes and its lumbering populace potential; I talked of student politics, how they were so petty and yet so necessary; I even talked of your mother, her perfect nostrils honoured with a tiny diamond, her self-assurance, her deep belly laugh, so hard-won but so worth it. She told me stories of the characters she’d met: Kevin the ch
emistry major who was afraid of armpit hair; Jan the caretaker who had all the makings of a serial killer; Christy the street kid who’d escaped her lecherous stepfather only to take up with a lecherous youth counsellor.

  For the first time in my life, I half-believed in karma. I told her of the Roma woman I saw in Florence when I was maybe fifteen. She approached the sun-stroked, sweat-soaked line I was standing in for some museum or another and seemed about to thrust the snot-faced, snivelling infant she held into another woman’s arms. As the victim instinctively reached to catch the bundle, the gyspy reached expertly into the woman’s purse. I saw the whole thing, saw the gypsy mother’s dark, impassive face as she mumbled incomprehensibly, saw her remain just as inscrutable as she got her prize. From my position in line, I had a perfect view of the entire transaction, and when she locked eyes with me, the gypsy with her snotty bait, she knew I knew and yet made no effort to hurry away. She stared haughtily, as if daring me to make a peep, and I made no sound, did not give her away. From then on, it’s as if I held our guilt in my pocket, a sharp shard of slate, black as her eyes, that I could cut myself on whenever the mood came over me.

  Gypsy Joan clapped her hands in glee. “See, you really are Roma, Raj. You’ve always sensed that all possession is theft. Together, we’ll travel the world, robbing from stupid, bus-tour Americans and eating carved meat from street vendors.”

  Part of me really did believe it was karma that it finally happened, after hours upon hours of heavy talking. It began with her sucking the popcorn salt from my fingers and went from there, as natural as our conversation, the two of us on that rock-hard futon, laughing and fumbling and then surprisingly intense. Still, I would spare you the details, a son’s embarrassment and possibly disgust, save such things for my old-man dreams.

  “Raj, are you still in there? You take longer than the girls, for goodness’ sake.”

  Your mother is knocking on the bathroom door. I don’t dignify this with an answer. She knows I am still showering.