“It must roll. When one kicks it,” I explained.
“No, no. Football is about throwing and catching and running,” Rob said.
“No, no. Football is kicking, and scoring goals,” I said. Rob was kind, but he knew little of sports.
“Goals? Hang on a sec.” Rob opened the trunk and rummaged through the contents. He withdrew a proper football.
“Yes, that is it!” I said. It was Umbro, just like the one Isaias had given me.
“Soccer,” said Rob. “This is a soccer ball.” It felt so good to hold a football. It had been too long since I had played.
“Soccer. Soccer. Soccer. Let’s play soccer,” said Kenny. He ran around the car and pretended to kick.
“In Canada, football is an entirely different game,” Rob explained.
I didn’t care if he called it soccer or cricket or hockey. The field had perfectly trimmed grass and the plump ball spun as we chased it and fought for the chance to kick it.
Later, when we were breathing hard from all the running, Rob gave us each a plastic bottle filled with water.
“We may have a placement for you,” he said. “How would you like to go live with a family?”
“Will Jason and DJ come?”
“No, just you. But the family is a good one and they have other kids,” he said.
“Can Kenny be with me?”
“Kenny is a little different,” he said. “I’m working on something for him, but no, he won’t go with you either.”
Why was it that every time I made friends and learned new things I had to go somewhere else?
“I’ll still be around, but I’ll see you less often,” said Rob. “Mostly you’ll live with the family and learn from them.”
“I will have work?” What kind of work could I do? I had seen no goats to tend. I had seen no chickens laying eggs, and I had seen not a single coffee cherry to pick. How would I pay for all I had been given?
“Well, maybe eventually you could get a job. Maybe in a year or two. When you’re older.”
Dare I ask for what I really wanted? Not to learn how to prepare dried noodles that came in a box, not to taste all the flavors of ice cream, but to use my mind for something of value.
“Will there be school?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Rob. “You will be required to go to school.”
This was the best day in Canada. A real football and the promise of school.
“I would like to go to this place,” I said.
* * *
◆
Three days later, Rob took me far from the city of Calgary to a place where the land was flat and the sky grew to enormous proportions. The large clouds in a bright blue sky were puffy on top, flat on the bottom, and low enough, it seemed, for me to reach out the window and touch.
Rob drove at more than 100 kilometers per hour on the smooth, wide road marked with yellow and white lines. The cars, pickups and trucks drove at great speeds all in one direction, easily passing Rob’s car. On the road opposite, they flew toward the city.
We passed kilometer after kilometer of wires that carried electricity to nowhere. It was enough time for us to share boiled egg sandwiches thick with mayonnaise and scattered bits of raw onion.
He slowed when we came to a village of narrower roads that twisted, and that were lined mostly with houses and low buildings.
“Well,” said Rob. “We’re finally here. What do you think?”
“This is where I will go to school?”
Rob had stopped in a field with a grid of tin boxes with windows and pointed roofs. It was a most terrible place.
“Not exactly here. Not literally. This is where you will live.”
There was nothing here but a few tall trees — no mountains, no cows, no goats, no sheep, no chickens — only yellowed grasses and sky. Yet when we stepped from the car, the air reeked of fresh animal dung. The wind swirled and lifted dirt as it did in Addis, blasting so much grit I could taste it coating my tongue and clinging to my teeth.
“That smell,” I said.
“Packing plant. You’ll get used to it. Soon you won’t even notice it.”
A crazed and vicious dog lunged at me but was yanked back by the chain tied to its neck. It kept a wide stance, barked and bared its teeth.
“Don’t worry, it’s tied,” said Rob. Spit dribbled from its jowls. It leapt and leapt. What if the chain broke? A man with a large protruding belly appeared at the door two steps from the insane dog.
“Hey! Hey! Killer! Shut up! Shut your goddamn trap!” he yelled. He braced an arm on the doorframe and kept watch over Rob and me.
We picked our way through a small garden where marigolds grew in rubber tires painted white. Naked dolls with hair knotted into dreadlocks, toy cars and trucks, a worn-out sofa and a small bicycle with an extra set of wheels littered the yard. A smaller building of faded tin was on the left. For cooking? Or for animals?
Rob led me to a wooden lean-to attached to the low metal structure. Music and a babble of loud English punctuated by laughter sifted through the walls.
The noise stopped suddenly when the metal door rattled, then banged shut. The room we entered was small and the air stale. It was crowded with furniture and with people holding red plastic cups.
All the faces stared at Rob and me.
A man with thick black hair to his shoulders, and forearms covered in blue tattoos heaved from an armchair.
“Welcome home!” he said, shaking my hand and clapping the other on my shoulder.
Someone pressed a glass of juice in my hand, and a woman named Janis showed me a table full of pastries and cheese, vegetables, crackers and pressed meat.
A small boy, of an age almost for school, peeked at me from behind his mother. He pointed at me with one finger.
“Look,” he said. “A chocolate man!”
“Shhh,” his mother said. “That’s not nice.” Yet his comment made me happy. A chocolate man would be a delicious thing. Later, the boy came beside me and licked my hand.
“You don’t taste chocolate,” he said.
I wondered could I lick him back. Would he taste of salt or sugar?
After the guests left, Janis showed me a small room with a bed and explained this private room would be for me alone. She embraced me, tight in her arms, as Etheye would.
“Welcome home,” she said. “We hope you will be happy here in this crazy mixed-up family.”
She was kind, but she was mistaken. This was not my home. This was not my family. I was here only to learn.
14
I hunched into the feather-filled coat Janis called a parka. A knitted wool cap over my head to protect my ears. Head tucked into a hood edged with fur. Fists plunged deep in the pockets. Still, invisible swords sliced my face into strips. I was a walking corpse, kept alive only by shivering and the quickness of my steps.
There were things worse than people trying to kill you. At least that death would be swift. But this death by freezing was slow and painful.
How could anyone live in a place this cold? Who would live where they could not grow food? Truly, all of the religions had it wrong. Hell was not a place of unending flame. Hell was a country called Canada.
I pushed into the building that held Mrs. MacPhail, the loud and bossy woman I had met the day before.
“Good morning!” she called. She carried a steaming cup. The smell of coffee filled the room that was warm and moist with the making of coffee and the breathing of many people.
“Help yourself to coffee,” she said. “Then come see me.”
I rubbed my hands together. I did not like this woman who yelled at people and said, “Get your crazy ass to work! Now!” Her voice so loud and sharp it hurt my ears. I also did not like the way her flecked green eyes penetrated the round lenses of her glasses and saw my soul.
I pou
red transparent coffee from the clear glass carafe. No roasting of beans here, no grinding with pestle and mortar. No ceremony. Coffee in white Styrofoam, not in tiny glass cups. No one gathered together. No one encouraged to drink one cup, two, three.
Here, tasteless coffee was consumed to stay warm.
I stood before this teacher’s desk, my hands wrapped around the cup, pulling it to my chin, hoping for warmth from a lukewarm liquid. Why was it not hot at least? Why did they pour cold milk into tepid liquid and call it coffee? Did they not know to heat the milk, add butter and stir slowly?
“You look cold,” she said. “Take off your coat. You’ll warm up quicker.”
She made no sense. To take off my coat would mean putting down the plastic cup. Taking off the coat would be like removing the fur of an animal. How could it stay warm without its thick layer of skin?
“It’s insulating you from the warmth of the room,” she said, seeming to read my mind.
My teeth clattered.
“You’ll get used to it,” Mrs. MacPhail said. “This is what we call a hint of autumn. Once winter comes, you’ll think this was tropical.”
Winter? The rains would be colder?
“Listen, I’ve got to place you, so I’m going to have to give you some tests. Then you are going to go to the high school.”
Janis had taken me to the high school yesterday. They did not want me there. Mrs. MacPhail raised her hand, palm facing me to stop my protest.
“My husband teaches there,” she said. “Social studies. You’ll just sit in on his classes, sit at the back of the classroom. We’ll call it ‘cultural immersion.’ Good for you. Good for his students.”
She spoke slowly and clearly, much better than most people, but still I missed some of the words. The tests she gave were simple.
And this school? How could they call it a school? Open to the street. No fence. No guards. No desks. No teacher at the front. No order. No discipline.
It looked more like the mill of Kofi’s cousin than a school. Boys and girls of all ages together. Mostly white, but I noticed an Asian, a Somali, a few Sudanese. Music played, people danced and talked. Others sewed or wove strips of leather and string. Only two people studied with books and pencils. How was this a school?
The high school was an equally poor learning environment. I sat up straight on the tattered sofa at the back of the class. The students were my age. Only one person with brown skin, and it so light, I could not tell the nationality. How to tell the different tribes or religion with these people? Everyone here looked the same and wore clothes with the most expensive logos.
It was true that everyone in North America was cool, and everyone was rich.
But this school had none of the ordered discipline of the Cathedral School in Addis.
“You may have noticed we have a visitor with us today.” Mr. MacPhail’s voice boomed into all parts of the room. “His name is Tesfaye. He is from Ethiopia. When you are finished your assignment, you may go talk with him. But not until you hand in your papers.”
A girl with corn silk hair slithered beside me, so close I could smell her flowery scent.
“Where’s Ethiopia?” she asked. “Is it somewhere in Canada?”
“It is a country in Africa.”
“I’ve seen people from Africa before, you know. And from China and Korea and Japan and the Philippines. There’s tons of them here, but I’ve never talked to one before. I like the color of you.”
The remaining students gathered around the sofa, one perched on each end and one plunked on the other side of the girl.
I felt like a museum exhibit. I was afraid to move.
“Can I touch you? Feel your skin?” Before I answered, the girl caressed my arm, her skin like the petal of hibiscus.
“Can I touch your hair?” Another girl, leaning in front, displayed breasts that nearly leapt from a tight shirt.
They touched and I touched, the hair and skin of these girls so smooth and so clean. I liked the girls, but Gashe would not be pleased that I was associating with such immodest women.
“Hey, you’re from Africa, right? What’s it like to shoot a lion?” asked a boy with hair as black as mine.
I had never shot a lion. I had never seen a lion, except in a book.
“It is nice,” I said.
“Oh, do you have zebras where you live?” asked the girl who rubbed the top of my head as if I was a prized cow.
“Monkeys and gorillas!” someone shouted.
“You live in a mud hut, right? How big is it?”
“He probably doesn’t even understand English, you dope!” said another girl. She slapped the boy’s arm with the back of her hand.
I was surrounded by kids, all of them talking so fast and saying so many things. It was as if they spoke a language other than the English I had learned at school. Neither was it the English of DJ and Jason. I grinned and tried to look more stupid than I was.
I had learned that sometimes in Canada, it was better to appear not to understand.
* * *
◆
“Look, whatever happened before now, it doesn’t matter,” said Mrs. MacPhail.
How could it not matter? How could the disappearance of Gashe not matter? How could my family being left with no one to provide not be important?
“I’m not going to ask you about it. What’s important is now, the choices you make now,” she said.
She could see inside of me, my blood, my bones, my thoughts. Could she see what had happened? Did she know about the list that carried my name? That I was a coward who ran away? Did she know that I had left my brother to fend for himself?
“Do you understand?” she asked.
“Yes.” I nodded.
“Okay.” She adjusted her glasses. “Now we have to get to work. You scored extremely well on the tests I gave you. Extremely well. The next step is to build a plan for you. We need to determine your needs and decide how to help you succeed. You are with an excellent family who will provide for your physical needs. They have a boy about your age. You’ve met him?”
* * *
◆
Spencer was the son of Janis and Tomas. Of all the cool boys I had met in Canada, Spencer was the coolest, with a type of hair that stuck from his head like the spokes on a wheel. My room and his room shared a thin wall.
Spencer knew everything about everything, and he taught me in the way that I had taught Ishi when he had come to live with us. He had a car held together splendidly by corroded metal. He allowed me to sit in the front seat. Like Gashe, he waved to everyone, but he did not throw alms onto the street.
Spencer had a wife who, he explained, was not a forever wife. He called her a “girlfriend.” Spencer said I should have a girlfriend, too. First, he showed me pictures in magazines he kept beneath his mattress. He was most excited about the women with starving bodies and breasts heavy with milk. I wondered what their fathers would do if they saw their daughters in Spencer’s magazines.
I let my hair grow into an afro so I could copy Spencer’s attractive style. We painted the spikes on my head yellow, green and red — the colors of the Ethiopian flag.
Everyone liked this style. They became happy when they saw me, especially when I remembered to walk in the manner that DJ and Jason had taught me, shuffling and dragging my legs as if I was a cripple. I liked the swooshing sound made by the leaves on the ground when I walked this way, and how the crisp leaves rose in waves like desert sand. I also liked how yellowed leaves drifted from branches, made as bare as they had been when I first came to Canada and met Yosef.
The wind I did not like. The cold of it stole my breath and froze my lungs. I was happy to seek shelter at school.
Pumpkins were everywhere. Every shape and every size. On tables, in a box beside the door. It looked like the preparation for a feast.
“Grab a pumpkin!” yelled Mrs. MacPhail when she saw me. I chose the best one. Small and heavy, the kind Etheye would choose to make the best wat.
“And a knife. We’re going to make jack-o’-lanterns for Halloween. Have you ever seen one?”
“It is a type of food?”
“More like a lantern,” she said. “A little lamp for decoration.” Another strange custom. Who would use perfectly good food to make a lamp?
The students taught me to stab the top of the pumpkin, cut a circle and pull out the slimy seeds that they shook into the garbage. I scraped the inside clean.
“Now, make a face,” a boy told me. I made my eyes big and let my tongue fall from my mouth.
“Not like that,” he laughed. I scrunched up my lips and crossed my eyes.
“In the pumpkin! You get to carve a face now.” He had used triangles to represent eyes and sharp teeth and was peeling the thin outside skin from the face. “You can make it anything you want. Happy. Sad. Scary.”
My hollow pumpkin leered, eyes looking left, in a frightening way. I added a poorly sewn scar. Mrs. MacPhail gave me a tiny candle.
“Tonight, when it gets dark, you light the candle and put it in the window or on the doorstep,” she said.
“The candle flame will cook it?”
“No, it’s just a decoration. Tomorrow, you throw it away.”
“Excellent food is thrown away?” How rich would be the street beggars of Addis if they came to Canada. “Everyone does this?”
Later, Spencer stepped into the room where I slept and where I studied.
“Come on, bud. We’ve gotta go,” he said.
Darkness had fallen. Books with difficult English words were open on my desk.
“Now?”
“Yes, and bring your pillowcase. Hurry. We’ve gotta pick up the others.”
The candle flickered in the face of my pumpkin that someone had put on the step, causing it to glow like a low moon. The door of Spencer’s car screeched open.
“Tesfaye! Come on! What’s taking you so long?” he asked.
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