The Greats

by Deborah Ellis

  THE GREATS

  The Greats

  Deborah Ellis

  Groundwood Books

  House of Anansi Press

  Toronto / Berkeley

  Copyright © 2020 by Deborah Ellis

  Published in Canada and the USA in 2020 by Groundwood Books

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a license from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright license, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

  Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press

  groundwoodbooks.com

  We gratefully acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Government of Canada.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: The greats / Deborah Ellis.

  Names: Ellis, Deborah, author.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190228091 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190228105 | ISBN 9781773063874 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781773063881 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781773063898 (Kindle)

  Classification: LCC PS8559.L5494 G74 2020 | DDC jC813/.54—dc23

  Design by Michael Solomon

  Illustration by Byron Eggenschwiler

  All royalties from the sale of this book will be donated to Mental Health Without Borders. mhwb.ca

  1

  There is a leak in the wall of Guyana’s national museum.

  Rain drools down the plaster. The leak gets bigger with each downpour. It threatens to damage the museum’s most expensive exhibit.

  In a large room on the ground floor is a giant prehistoric ground sloth, standing on her haunches, arms reaching up into an artificial cannonball tree.

  Megatherium. Gather to her friends and to the people who come to see her.

  The officials don’t think the leak is a big problem, so they ignore it.

  The leak gets bigger.

  The officials decide to put a patch over it.

  Covering up a problem only makes it worse. The heavy Guyana rainwater pools inside the wall, then spreads out to become many leaks.

  Water snakes across the floor, putting the treasured exhibit in peril.

  By the time the officials decide to do the work necessary to fix what is really wrong, the damaged wall has to be completely taken down, and a new, stronger wall needs to be built in its place.

  It takes the workers a whole day to take down the wall. At the end of the day, they hang big sheets of plastic over the gap, secure the sheets with bricks and boards, then head home to their families.

  The sky is dark. The museum is quiet.

  The only movement is the night breeze, tickling the edges of the plastic, looking for a way inside.

  2

  Friday night, and Jomon is alone at the party.

  He is sitting at a crowded table in a crowded banquet room at a Chinese restaurant in Georgetown, just down the street from the national museum. The lights are bright, the voices are loud, and the first-place medal is heavy around his neck.

  Jomon’s body is in the chair, but his mind is far, far away.

  “Off in Jomonland,” his mother used to call it when he got lost in his head. She named the place when he was eight years old and she was tired of fighting for his attention.

  “You’re just like your father,” she said — one of the few times she said it with a smile. “If you’re going to disappear like he does, let’s at least make sure you have a good place to go.”

  Mum sat him down at the kitchen table and brought out the crayons. She sat beside him and said, “Draw someplace beautiful.”

  He drew a clearing in the forest. Tree branches came together overhead like the roof of the cathedral. He drew green grass, cool and soft. He put a brook along one side, gurgling and bubbling. He didn’t draw birds — not that time — but he knew they were there, singing to each other, enjoying the day, expecting nothing from him.

  “You need a place to sit,” Mum said.

  With a brown crayon, Jomon drew a straight-backed chair, the only chair he knew how to draw.

  Mum gently took the crayon from him. She extended the lines of the chair and turned it into a bench.

  “You might sometimes want me in Jomonland with you,” she said.

  But tonight, drought has come to Jomonland. Everything is gray. The bench is broken, his mum is dead, and he is stuck all alone at this stupid party.

  He should have gone straight home after the final competition, but he thought the dinner might salvage the night.

  It hasn’t.

  Months of study, practices, regional competitions and frayed nerves all came to an end barely two hours ago with Jomon and the rest of Team Durban Park winning the Guyanese National High School Geography Competition. All four students received medals. If they were lucky enough to be accepted to the University of Guyana (which for Jomon, the team’s youngest, was still over three years away), they would get scholarships to cover some of their tuition.

  Jomon knows he should feel thrilled.

  All he feels is empty.

  Again.

  What now?

  Jomon shoves the remains of a spring roll into his mouth to chase the question away, but the question refuses to go.

  What is there now?

  The banquet room is full of students, teachers and community members. Geography teams from all over Guyana are eating, laughing and talking over every minute of the weeks-long competition, from school-wide to city-wide, from regionals to nationals. Teachers and politicians give speeches, congratulating the students and congratulating themselves.

  Bits of conversation swirl around Jomon.

  “Remember when I said Tropic of Copernicus instead of Tropic of Capricorn?”

  “After tonight, I never have to think about who controls the Nicobar Islands. Unless I want to go there — and I might!”

  On and on it goes.

  The bright lights bounce off the three other gold medals in the room. Jomon’s teammates. While the competition was going on, Jomon could pretend they were mates — a team, all for one and one for all. But the competition is over. Jomon sees it for the lie that it is. The three other Team Durban Park members are scattered around the room, probably happy to be rid of him, enjoying the company of their friends and family.

  Jomon has no family at the party.

  As far as he is concerned, he has no family at all.

  Other kids’ parents pat him on the back and say “Congratulations!” on their way to talk to who they really want to talk to. “You’re a young man with a terrific future ahead of you!”

  Terrific future? Who were they kidding? He knew he’d never get to Terrific.

  He could pretend otherwise, for a time. The competition kept him busy with hours of studying at the library and at home, filling his head with the prime meridian, medieval cartographers, inland seas and Asian mountain ranges. Geography kept him going.

  Now it’s done. The heaviness is back. The gray ghost that lives behind his eyes has room again to take over, blocking out colors, turning everything sour.

  Jomon watches the other people in the room. They talk easy. They laugh easy. They pose for pictures.

  I am a different species, he thinks. I don’t belong here. I don’t belong anywhere.

  The party is torture and he can’t stand it one more second. He gets to his feet.

  “You’re not leaving?”

  A man who is a can
didate in the upcoming election and one of the sponsors of the competition, gently pushes Jomon back into his chair.

  “The party is just getting started. Look, they’re bringing out more food!” the man says. “Let’s get that plate filled up! All that studying has made you too skinny. The ladies like some meat on the bones. Eat up. There’s room on my campaign for a bright young man. Of course, it doesn’t pay in money, but experience! That’s the real thing. Your teacher tells me you also ran a charity book drive. Now you can go back to all those people and ask them to vote for me.”

  Jomon thinks about saying that the book drive is an assignment for social studies class, that all the students have to do a community project, that he did it with four other students and he didn’t even take the lead.

  But he doesn’t bother. It doesn’t matter.

  The candidate keeps talking as he loads up Jomon’s plate with food. Jomon eats. He can taste that the food is good, but it gives him no pleasure. When the candidate moves on to someone else, Jomon puts down his fork.

  How are things in Jomonland? he can almost hear his mother ask.

  Bad, Mum. Real bad.

  How can he be at a celebration, surrounded by nice people who say good things about him, and all he wants to do is disappear?

  “What’s wrong with me?” he whispers to his plate.

  The celebration crawls along. The Chronicle shows up, and Jomon has to pose for pictures with his team, smile on his face, medal held up beside his cheek.

  “This will be online in an hour,” the reporter says, “and you can see it in print in tomorrow’s edition.”

  It’s easy after that to step away from the group. No one calls after him. He walks out of the banquet room, down the stairs, out of the restaurant and onto the street.

  The darkness is a relief.

  Jomon takes the medal from around his neck and shoves it in his trouser pocket. He walks slowly through the streets, past people in church clothes heading home from evening prayer meetings, past couples heading out to the bars, and tourists finding their way back to their hotels. He moves through it all as if he is invisible.

  Exams are coming up. Okay. He’ll study hard for them. That should keep him going until the end of the school year. He’ll get a job during the break, delivering groceries, doing odd jobs, whatever he can find. He’ll be away from home all day. He’ll save his pay in a bank account where his father can’t get at it.

  Good. This is a good plan. Hard work, long hours, earning money and keeping it safe. He’ll be too tired at the end of each day to feel any damn feelings or ask any damn questions.

  Then school will start up again. He’ll try out for the geography team again. Maybe they’ll win first place again and eat more Chinese food at the celebration.

  And afterwards, he’ll walk home slowly through the dark Georgetown night, looking for a reason to keep living.

  He just feels so tired.

  Jomon turns into his block. Maybe he should have told his father about the event tonight. Dad has been drinking less lately. Even made dinner one night, that spicy chicken dish of Mum’s. Jomon walked into the house, took one sniff of the familiar aroma and walked out again.

  Maybe he shouldn’t have done that. Maybe he should give his father a chance. Maybe nine months of silence is enough to punish him.

  Jomon’s hands curl into fists.

  Nine months isn’t enough. Always and forever would not be enough.

  The house is dark when he gets home. Of course it is. His father drank the electric bill money. Probably drank the rent money, too.

  Jomon kicks at a beer can on his way to his small bedroom. His father is out at the bar. Just another Friday night.

  Jomon shuts the door of his room, pushes off his shoes and falls onto the bed fully dressed in his school uniform. He feels so miserable that he sings to himself the song his father used to sing to him when he was little. Dad calls it the Soothing Song.

  Chatter monkeys in the trees

  Swaying branches in the breeze

  Sleep the hours of dark away

  Wake up to a brighter day.

  He finally drops into sleep. He dreams of food platters multiplying around him, stacking up like prison walls, giving him no way out.

  3

  While Jomon is sleeping, Gather is waking up.

  The night breeze, fresh from the Caribbean Sea, slips into the exhibit hall through the gaps in the plastic sheeting. It inches around, exploring, discovering new territory, taking up new space.

  It winds its way around Gather’s tree-trunk legs, then swirls over her strong belly and shoulders. It breathes a thousand scents into her nostrils. A thousand tastes dance on her tongue.

  It whispers in her ears, “Come out!”

  Gather smells and tastes and hears.

  And wakes up.

  She moves her arm, just a little. It is stiff from being posed in one spot for such a long time. She moves it some more. She wiggles her long claws. She sways her hips. Then she puts one foot out in front of her. She moves her other foot.

  Soon she is at the plastic wall.

  She pushes it aside as if it is fog.

  Gather is quiet. She makes not a sound as she slips out onto the street.

  She fills her lungs.

  It is good to be alive.

  Again.

  4

  Now Jomon is running. In his stocking feet.

  It is three o’clock in the morning.

  He doesn’t remember waking up. He doesn’t remember leaving his house or why he is running. He doesn’t remember the loud SLAM of the door hitting the wall as he bombed through and he doesn’t remember the second SLAM as the door banged shut into place behind him, or the light of the neighbor lady, awakened by the noise.

  He doesn’t remember his feet slipping on the steps from his porch and sending him tumbling to the cement landing. Later he’ll notice the bruises but he won’t wonder about them. He’s used to bruises. For his father, drinking and hitting go together.

  Jomon keeps running down the middle of the street until a cabbie honks him out of the way. Then he runs along the side of the street, in the gravel and up on the sidewalks, jumping on and off curbs.

  Running, running, running.

  Jomon puts his foot down where there should be cement but instead there is a hole in the sidewalk. His whole leg plunges into the water flowing in a gutter below. His face hits the pavement nose first and his other leg bends beneath him.

  Blood gushes.

  Jomon pulls his foot out of the water, wipes the blood from his face with his shirt sleeve and starts running again. He runs with a bit of a limp, but he does not let that slow him down.

  He keeps running lopsidedly until he reaches the liquor store.

  Jomon pants heavily as he glares at that store. He grabs the closest thing he can reach, a handful of pebbles, and pelts them at the window.

  The gravel just tinkles like fairy dust against the bars and the glass.

  He runs up to the store and kicks it, hurting his foot and making him madder. He grabs the window bars and tries to shake them apart. He looks around for a proper tool to use against the hateful building, but the street is too clean. There is nothing he can use.

  Then he remembers.

  He does have something.

  In his pocket is the geography medal. He takes it out. Its gleam mocks him.

  All that work, and your life is the same! All that work, and YOU are the same! You are nothing! You will always be nothing!

  Jomon begins the wind-up, like David preparing to slay Goliath with his slingshot.

  David knew his slingshot would send the stone right into the giant’s head. Jomon knows his medal will fly strong right through the pane of glass.

  Jomon lets the medal soar and watches it go. The
medal crashes right through the window. Shards of glass sparkle like stars in the streetlight.

  The flying medal makes a big hole in the window. Jomon needs to make it bigger. He runs to the store, and with his fist he punches in as much of the window as he can reach, smash after smash, not stopping until the window pane is as clear as he can make it, the broken glass tinkling against the bottles of rum and gin inside.

  Jomon stops then and catches his breath. He holds up his hands and sees the blood running from them.

  But he’s still angry.

  He starts running again.

  He doesn’t get far.

  A police car drives right up in front of Jomon, and when he turns to go in another direction, another police car blocks his way.

  Foolishly, he tries to fight his way through the police officers, but there are too many and they are older, bigger and stronger. He is slammed belly down against a car. His arms are yanked back, and cuffs are twisted around his wrists.

  Still he tries to get away.

  “Stop fighting us,” a woman’s voice says loudly next to his ear. “We’ve got you now. There is nowhere for you to go except with us. So take a deep breath and quit fighting.”

  Jomon does not want to take a deep breath, but the police keep him pinned down on the hood of the car, waiting for him to give in. He keeps them waiting.

  His face is pressed against the car, right cheek down. Through the arms of the officers, he can see the empty street.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he thinks he sees something move. It looks bigger than a house, but whatever it is moves in shadows, and Jomon can’t see it clearly.

  Jomon is distracted and stops fighting long enough for the police officers to stop leaning on him. He feels the officers ease off and he starts fighting them again.

  He fights with his feet as they shove him in the back of the car. He fights the car seat with his head as they drive him to the police station. He fights and fights, and by the time they arrive at the police station, he has no fight left.