Believing Cedric

by Mark Lavorato

  Steven Greig had a mother somewhere, a mother that had given birth to three children, from three different fathers. The oldest of her children, a girl, had been promptly whisked out of the delivery room and adopted at birth. Steven imagined her sometimes, sure she was living a well-adjusted life somewhere else in Canada, somewhere green and kind. After her, Steven’s mother had a boy, who was also taken out of earshot before he’d cried for the first time, and was probably then rewarded the same fate, jumping through the sprinklers in some architecturally controlled neighbourhood in Ontario or British Columbia, a neighbourhood that was, again he imagined, green and kind. But on the afternoon that Steven came into the world, things were different. His grandmother happened to be in the same hospital, on the same day.

  She’d accidentally learned, by means of an overly helpful assistant at the registry, that her very own daughter was in the hospital as well, and in the natal wing no less. Not having seen her in more than five years, she thought the coincidence providential, in the same way it was providential that she was in the process of turning over a new leaf—swore to it, honest to goodness, once and for all—and had been straight and sober for almost three days consecutive, following the bleak news about her liver, and a few lumps that were awaiting removal and testing. After wheeling her IV pole through several fluorescent and disinfected corridors, she learned that she was a grandmother for the very first time (having never heard a word of the grandson and granddaughter who’d preceded Steven). She demanded to see him, this newborn, her blood. The disinclined hospital staff checked records, papers, legalities, murmured to one another behind high counters, and finally assented. She picked him up, rocked him, stuck her pinkie into his mouth, cooed. She had a great idea.

  A month after she’d taken him home, her concerned neighbours had called the police so many times to complain about the child’s incessant, brutal, and—the most pressing reason for the phone calls—noisy neglect that Steven could legally be taken out of her custody. However, as he was officially under the care of a blood relative, Child Services was obliged to contact other genealogical connections in hopes of finding another, better suited, family member who might be interested in taking him in. His aunt, who had eight children of her own, and was living in the largest low-income housing project in North America, Regent Park, in inner-city Toronto, reluctantly agreed, in the diminishing hope of receiving more—and maybe even, for once, adequate—child support cheques.

  Steven’s first memory was one of contentment and self-worth. He and his cousin were walking to a corner store (he used this term “cousin” because of its blanketed convenience; though he’d never actually sat down and calculated his relation to the people he lived with, whether they were step-cousins, first, second, third, half-cousins, or no relation whatsoever, he referred to them all, simply, as “cousins”), and as they were walking, this particular cousin, Kipp, was shrewdly and subtly pointing out policemen along the way. He was teaching Steven to look for the cars with OPP written on the side, or the unmarked sedans that parked like slinking (though always well-buffed and Armor-Alled) ghosts in the backdrop, the only vehicles that had two men sitting casually inside them, as if having nothing better to do with their days and nights than chat in the comfort of a Buick, nonchalantly raising a pair of binoculars to their eyes every once in a while. His cousin also pointed out the neighbourhood snitches, who had been blackmailed into collaborating with those very men in the sedans. He made sure that Steven could identify them all. “Hey, Stevie, see these guys over there, on your right? No, no, your other right, bud—yeah, that’s it, good man. See those guys there? Snitches. Fuckin’ snitches. The whole group’ve ’em. Gottem? Good. Good man.” At seven years old, Steven appreciated very much being called a man. He was important. Already.

  Sometimes they would go out after dark and stop just before the door of a tiny store that had closed for the night, his cousin crouching down on his haunches, talking softly into Steven’s face. “Okay, little buddy, here’s what’s gonna happen: I’m gonna go inside and get us some treats, okay? So if you see anyone coming, any cops or snitches, or anyone else who looks pissed off, I want you to knock on the glass, like this.” He wormed a knuckle between the bars on the door, tapped three times. “Okay?”

  Steven would comply gravely, understanding.

  “Good.” His cousin would stand and take a few steps towards the back of the building but would often stop, hesitate, then bend down again to ask what kind of treat, exactly, he wanted from inside.

  Steven was the ninth child in the house; five boys, three girls, two rooms. He understood that he was living with his aunt and uncle instead of his parents, but didn’t know why, and already knew better not to ask. His aunt and uncle weren’t happy people at the best of times, but questions of any sort, about school, clothes, milk, eggs, seemed to reliably set them off into a frustrated rant that often spiralled into rage; the mayhem of nine children weaving skittishly between them, trying to get out of the house, or, if it was winter, trying to get away into the farthest corner; someone getting slapped in the head as he or she passed, another shoved onto the ground, bouncing against the drum-clang of the stove. There were only two people in the house that could talk back and deal with the consequences: Kipp, who, at sixteen, had already found several ways to make his own money, and Natalie, whose glamorous air came from her well-earning job as a stripper and the near super-idol status she’d attained at having been a Sunshine Girl on the third page of The Toronto Sun (the picture of which Steven had her sign). Everyone else had to make themselves as small as they could when it came down to it, or run.

  The first time Steven saw someone shot, he was ten years old. He had a friend who lived across the way, at Sackville and Gerrard, whose house he would sleep over at, sometimes for days at a time, no questions asked. His friend’s mother was bedridden with pulmonary emphysema, which amounted to the house being reigned by her teenaged sons; the walls lined with calligraphy, illustrations, and graffiti by anyone who could wield a felt pen and was struck with the inclination, dishes festering in a sink that was perpetually backed up with an orange and oily scum, and adolescents sitting on a sofa they’d dragged into the kitchen, passing around a box of artificially sweetened and coloured cereal through a mist of narcotic smoke, threads and clouds of hashish, pot, and sometimes something else that was mildly sweet or mildly sour. He and his friend were standing outside when it happened. A young man with a bulky jacket was pacing in front of the house, as if waiting, as if wanting to talk with someone inside, but was uncomfortable with entering. One of the boys from in the house stepped into the doorway for no apparent reason, saw the young man with the bulky jacket, and stiffened, terrified, hands out on the doorframe on either side of him. Steven was watching his reaction, so didn’t see the gun, just heard the staccato bam, and watched his body fold onto the porch, limp and lifeless. He remembers hearing the other boy sprinting away, and the sugary smell of burnt gunpowder.

  Steven came to learn that this was how violence worked. It wasn’t logical or predictable, it wasn’t a buildup of reasonable causes that led to an unreasonable effect, an argument that escalated, a series of increasingly potent threats exchanged; it was just suddenly there, abrupt and conclusive. And it was something that couldn’t be questioned. Its aftermath could, yes, but not the certainty of the act itself. The act was final, absolute, definitive. And it was something you had to be ready for, everywhere, always.

  The second time, he was twelve. It was near the Boardwalk, where the dealers strutted invincibly along the pavement until they spotted a ghost car on one of the periphery streets, when they shuffled timidly out of sight. This time, he and another friend, a girl named Kirsti, to whom he would lose his virginity before either of them were pubescent, were loitering in the wading pool, built only four years earlier but already largely dilapidated. There were tiles missing, grout chipped and peeling, hammer dents in the moulding, a half-submerged shopping cart poking above the surface like a
miniature shipwreck, the fountain of water spewing out at crooked angles. (Steven understood, and at a very early age, that his neighbourhood was not green, not kind.) Bam. A body crumpling to the ground at the edge of the pool, a dark puddle fanning out from beneath it. No warning, no pre-empt, just screams to follow it through, round it off. Kirsti grabbed his arm and together they fled deeper into the housing complex, the wet of their footprints chasing them.

  Steven was dealing drugs long before he was aware that drugs were even dealt. His cousin Kipp had him running around on “errands” all over Regent Park, bringing wads of something to someone’s living room and running back with a wad of something else. In return Kipp would give him some money for candy, chips, and pop whenever he wanted it, reminding him, offhandedly, handing him a ten-dollar bill, “not to take shit from anybody.”

  And Steven was getting the hang of that too, was less and less afraid to tell people off when he had to, to push people back. He’d even taken to testing the limits with his aunt and uncle when they fomented into one of their screaming fits. He was thirteen. It was 1979. And life was good. The Montreal Canadiens had won the Stanley Cup, there was a new television show called You Can’t Do That on Television, and the movie The Warriors was playing in theatres with authentic and exciting brawls spilling out of the cinemas afterwards. Steven even had friends, or at least people he could hang out with—break bottles with, steal from 7-Elevens with, and stand in alleyways with afterwards, smoking purloined cigarettes in a contemplative apathy. He’d found, in his own awkward way, a niche, a place to belong.

  Then, on a cloudy day in March 1980—when the remnant piles of ice leftover from the snow removal of the winter had turned pebbled and muddy, water fingering out from beneath them and streaking the cement between the apartments with glistening pinstripes—everything changed. He had just finished running an errand for Kipp and had rounded a corner where he came face to face with a police officer, uniformed, polite. “Hey,” he greeted, hands on the black implements of his belt, “I was wondering if you could help me out here, bud. I’ve got a couple questions for some kids, about your age, but they’re not at their house. Maybe you can tell me where to find them. Their names are, uh . . .” he produced a small spiral-bound notepad, flipped the page, and stepped closer, to show his list. At that point, a strange impulse came over Steven, and he couldn’t explain why, it was just there, and happening, automatically. He noted the proximity of the policeman’s foot to his, lifted his leg, and stomped his heal onto the polished black toe of the man’s boot, spat in his face, turned, and ran.

  When he was caught and put into the officer’s cruiser, it was the first time in his life that he’d ever felt constrained, confined, and couldn’t explain his reaction to this either. He flailed, screamed, bit, clawed, pulled hair, spit until his mouth was dry, lay down across the backseat and tried kicking the windows out, and when none of this worked, he managed to get his pants below his waist and piss everywhere he could fling his urine with furious pelvic rotations. He was further restrained, driven away, pulled into a tall and official-looking building, and heavily sedated. When he woke, bound to a bed, he could only think of his cousins, how they were going to laugh at this story, how Kipp would tell his friends about it while rolling a joint over the coffee table, how Natalie would probably ruffle his hair, call him a brat, chuckle. He’d be a kind of hero in their eyes, he imagined, standing up to the police like that. He was brave.

  Eventually a woman came to talk to him, gently, calmly, like you would talk to an animal before opening its cage to transfer it to another. She wanted to know about his family life, wanted to hear about his house, his aunt, uncle, his “cousins.” Steven was struck with another clever idea. He began to speak in a whisper, like there was something in his throat, something painful and swollen, and when she brought her face closer to listen, he spat in it, screamed at her to release him, struggled in his bonds, writhed on the polyester sheets. She called out over her shoulder and three large men appeared bearing one small needle and another day was gone. Or was it a week. A month?

  When he’d finally agreed to cooperate, to sit and talk like a regular human being, the theatrics having become less a novelty, less worth their future storytelling, Steven found himself sitting across from a more stern-faced woman. She placed the news onto the table like stolen coins, her gestures half-guilty, half-smug. It seemed, she’d said, this “incident” had been coming for a while now. She’d met with his aunt and uncle several times, had been to see his home, interviewed his family. She’d learned that, apparently, he’d always been a bit of a problem child. Always a little wild, a little devious. He had, she warned, the potential makings of a criminal or, at the very least, of someone slightly unstable, depressed, with the traces of an anxiety disorder. Which had sparked some research into his parentage. Did he know, she asked rhetorically, that his “maternal associations” had a history of mental illness? Perhaps not. Well. She was afraid that, yes, that was the case. And these things could be hereditary, she wanted him to know.

  Steven started shifting in his chair, shrugged. “Look, lady, I don’t give a shit. When can I go home? I’m fuckin’ bored here.”

  The woman scratched the back of her hand. “I’m not sure you understand. Your aunt and uncle . . .” she turned her hand over, looked into her palm for a moment, then back up at him, “they don’t want you back. That’s not going to be your home anymore. We’re going to find you another one instead. With a foster family at first, but I’m sure you’ll be adopted in no time.”

  Steven felt something growing inside his stomach, rising into his chest, and this time he knew what it was. Once, on a hot August day, he and one of his cousins had gone down to the Harbourfront, where the Gardiner Expressway thrummed at their backs, and had walked through sites of demolition and construction, the old factories with massive machinery rusting behind splintered windows, shards dangling in the frames like loose teeth. They watched as a thunderstorm edged across the lake, toward the city. It was so hazy that Steven could barely make out the contours of its cauliflower clouds, but he could feel the air turning viscous and weighted, becoming slower, electric. Until the growling of the storm had swollen above the burr of the freeway, the flickers of lightning piercing through the sooty veil like tracers of siren strobes. He and his cousin stood below, shrunken. It was mammoth, fierce, inexorable. And now it was welling up inside of him, lifting him as if he were caught in one of its updrafts, floating above his chair. His arms bolted down abruptly, finding ground. He flung the table aside, lunged to grab on to one of the woman’s hands in the air—which had been raised in surprise, in fright—and sunk his teeth into her fingers until he had the taste of pennies in his mouth.

  The juvenile ward of the psychiatric hospital was not a nice place. It consisted of three wings. One for the criminally deranged, people who had violent and aggressive tendencies toward others: pedophiles, child murderers, adolescent rapists, and chronic assaulters, all of them heavily medicated, strings of drool from the corners of their mouths indicative of how well they were being kept in check; another ward for those who did damage to themselves: anorexics, bulimics, substance abusers, the manically depressed, suicide attemptees, and self-harmers; and another ward that was reserved for borderline cases like himself, who were in danger (and seemingly the “imminent” kind) of slipping into the preceding two categories.

  Because his was the least secured of the wings, Steven soon saw the potential of making a break for it and within a week had made the first of his two escape attempts. Looking back, however, he could admit it was a stupid move, ill thought out, ill timed, ill executed. Had he not spent the afternoon in therapy, the impulse probably wouldn’t have risen up in him so strongly, and he could have bided his time a little more wisely.

  The problem with therapy was that people bought into it not because it was helpful or they believed in the process, but because if you cooperated during the sessions, you were rewarded with “off-ward privi
leges”: like going outside onto the grounds, a patch of cement enclosed with an impossibly tall chain-linked fence, where you could mingle with older people who’d been institutionalized most of their lives; or to the rec room , where the recreation included puzzles with pieces missing or their cardboard swollen with dried saliva, boards with checkers from five different sets, Connect Four apparatuses mended with Scotch tape). For these honours, people let their emotions fly, sincerely pouring them out to the good-natured therapist and to everyone else who was forced to be there and listen.

  “Me?” someone began that day, pointing at his sternum. “Well, this morning, I just . . . I wanted . . . I mean, I had this urge to, like, feel my bones somewhere, you know? Like with a knife. Like, cut to the bone and push on it, against it, you know? Like a steak. That feeling. You know what I mean?”

  The therapist, slowly, earnestly nodded his head, narrowing his eyes, trying, seemingly straining, to understand. “Okay. Okay,” he said conclusively. “Thanks for sharing, Jamie.” At length he looked up at everyone else. “Okay. Okay, who’s next?”