“I’m picking up my own child,” she’d say before walking away.
I’d be right next to her, tugging on her sleeve. “Why did Katie’s mom ask if you needed a job when you have one?”
“Stop talking, Kara,” she’d whisper back, her face tight.
Ms. Gold led us to the Corrective Section, which was really just her desk. She sat down behind it and gestured for my mother and me to sit in the two blue stack chairs on the other side.
“I’m just going to get right to the point, Mrs. — I’m sorry, Miss Davis,” said Ms. Gold, folding her hands together. “There has been a rumour around the school — started by Kara — that she killed a pig on your vacation to Jamaica. The children have been abuzz with it. It seems to be quite the playground story.”
“You called me down here because my daughter told a lie?”
“So the story isn’t true?”
“No,” said my mother. “But even if it were, a child witnessing or helping out with butchering isn’t unusual or uncommon in Jamaica. But no, my daughter didn’t participate in either activity.”
“Miss Davis, to be frank, whether or not the story is true is irrelevant. It’s the nature of the lie that’s concerning.”
My mother looked at me, but I lowered my head so as to not meet her stare. I went over the story in my mind: the blood, the knife, the hammer, the screams. It no longer came to me in images; now it just seemed like words that didn’t belong to me.
“From what Miss Kakos, Mr. Roberts — the gym teacher — and I have gathered, Kara has exhibited pleasure and enthusiasm toward the concept of slaughtering an animal.”
“Well, children enthusiastically step on worms, rip the legs off a daddy-long-legs, squish bees. Kids are intrigued by the concept of death.”
“I understand that this is a delicate topic, and I am not hurrying to any conclusions. However, perhaps it would be good for Kara to see the school’s child psychologist —”
“Let me stop you right there,” said my mother, raising her hand. She paused for a beat and then smiled the way I’d see her do sometimes when a cashier or a waiter or our landlord got on her nerves.
“Ms. Gold, did you also know that I’m quite familiar with educational protocol?” she said. “And I believe that for a situation like this, the protocol is that before prescribing the school’s psychologist, the teacher must give the parent the option to take their child to a family doctor who would then offer their own referral.”
Ms. Gold pressed her lips together, a flush of red colouring her neck. When my mother finished speaking, she cleared her throat. “I ultimately don’t believe that the situation is all that serious,” she said. “I just thought you should know.”
“Thank you for your concern, and rest assured it will be dealt with. If you don’t mind,” said my mother, standing up. I got up with her. “I would like to take Kara home now.”
In the car, my mother turned to me, her finger pointed in my face. “Do you realize what you’ve done?”
“Mom —”
“I’m speaking.” She snapped her fingers loudly, and I flinched. “These people already look at me like I’m trash, Kara.”
I opened my mouth to speak even though I had no idea what to say her, but she just shook her head and turned away from me, resting back against her seat. “I do not need you making things worse by lying. Why would you even say that you killed a pig?”
I stayed silent, hunched in my seat; my eyes wandered as if scouting out an exit strategy, though I knew I could never just open the door and walk away from her.
My mother banged her palm against the steering wheel. “I asked you a question.”
“I don’t know why I did it,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re a little liar. If you were sorry you’d just stop making up stories,” she said. “I don’t know what I did to make you this way. Did you tell anyone from the neighbourhood?”
I squeezed my index and middle fingers with my left hand. “Just that I saw it. But nobody cares there, and you said that in Jamaica —”
“That isn’t the point,” she said. “I’m dropping you off at Nana’s. She’s off work today. I need to go back to the library, and I just can’t deal with you right now.”
“We only live one street over from her. If anything happens I can call her and she can come over. Please don’t make me go over there.”
“You not wanting to go to Nana’s just makes me want to leave you there even more. Put on your seat belt.”
* * *
• • •
Before my mother dropped me off at Nana’s front door, she instructed me to tell my grandmother what I’d said about the pig’s head.
“And I’ll know if you don’t,” she’d said.
Telling Nana what I’d told my friends and the kids at school was easy: it was what came after that made me run into the guestroom and collapse on the bed, my face buried in one of the floral pillows that had been placed perfectly against the headboard. The door was closed, but I could hear my grandmother calling all the right people in the neighbourhood to tell them about what I’d done.
“She a bright-eye likkle pickney,” she said to Rochelle’s great-aunt. “I tell her say, ‘Yuh make yuh sail too big fi yuh boat, yuh sail will capsize yuh!’ She always make up story them, from when she was small! No way her mother let her slice up a pig, my daughter nuh crazy!”
Of course my friends’ mothers told them all about it, and of course none of them was surprised. And when I ran into the group on my way to the 7-Eleven, they acted as much.
“Hey, Kara,” said Jordan, sucking on a rocket popsicle.
“We were gonna see if we could get into the school and run up to the roof,” said Rochelle. “Wanna come?”
“I’m okay. Thanks.”
“I told you she’d say no, Chelle,” said Anita, smirking as she walked past me, knocking her shoulder into mine. “She’s too scared.”
* * *
After my mother’s visit I’d been afraid Ms. Gold would tell the class I’d been lying, but two days later I was still being asked about Hanover. I ended up repeating details rather than adding new ones; forgetting to lean in close at certain points and yell at others; not bothering to whisper to inspire shivers or to widen my eyes to elicit gasps. At recess, I leaned against the trunk of the giant willow tree that sprouted from a patch of dirt dug into the pavement, watching some boys play Cops and Robbers while a group of girls played Mail Man, Mail Man, their legs stretched painfully wide in near-splits. After a few minutes, I saw Anna Mae walking up to me, her French braids tied together with a lavender ribbon that criss-crossed in and out. She leaned next to me.
“I never see you alone,” she said.
Her voice was softer than I’d expected. Too soft for a kitten-killer.
“Just feel like sitting out.”
“You’re standing.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said.
We stood together for a while in a silence that I found unusual but not uncomfortable. It even felt peaceful. It was a silence that gave me the opportunity to settle into myself, to hear myself breathe and think.
I looked at Anna Mae in her purple corduroy overalls and noticed for the first time that her skin was a sort of greyish-cream and that her eyes were green. She pushed her hands deep into her pockets and slowly raised her head so that the back of it rested against the trunk and some of the bark chipped off into her hair. I felt no desire to think of a crazy anecdote for her to listen to, no need to twist myself into a new identity. I just felt like talking to her.
“It must’ve sucked watching kittens die.”
“I was six the first time. I threw up,” she said.
I stood there and imagined what it would be like to watch a kitten, barely bigger than a grown-up’s hand, get dunked and held under
water.
“I didn’t do it, you know,” I said. “Kill a pig? Made it all up.”
She smiled. “That’s okay.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
The bell rang, and I could hear the collective groan of kids mid-game — they’d have to wait till lunchtime to pick up where they’d left off, and there’d no doubt be shouts for do-overs and clean slates. Anna Mae and I walked quietly together to the nearest school doors, side-stepping a tennis ball rolling its way down to the fences, completely abandoned by the boys who’d been playing Red Ass ten minutes earlier.
Snow Day
At the end of third period just before lunch, Principal Carrington declared the afternoon a snow day and told us all to go home. Outside, the streets were dusted like powdered sugar and the snowbanks around the sidewalks were tiny white-and-grey mounds that reached only as high as my ankles, but we were told that a little after midday, easterly winds would be blowing through the city. We were told that the gusts would threaten to rip trees out from the concrete, and would bring with them the type of snow you wish for at Christmas. The type of snow that whites out the blueness of the sky; that forces cars to crawl inch by inch on the highway because whiteness is all anyone can see. And Principal Carrington was kicking us out before we could be trapped inside to wreak havoc on her school.
“Aww yeah!” My class started to howl. Even I joined the others when they banged their fists on the desks. I was in Extended French, and all of my classes today were with Mme. Rizzoli. I would’ve wished for an earthquake to get out of spending even one more minute trying to translate my thoughts into another language.
“SNOW DAY! SNOW DAY! SNOW DAY!” we chanted.
“Taisez-vous!” Mme. Rizzoli snapped, putting her hands on her hips. “You are all eighth-graders, act like it!”
We pressed our smiling lips together and our shoulders shook with silent laughter. “Snow day. Snow day. Snow day,” we whispered.
“J’ai dit taisez-vous!”
Principal Carrington was still talking, her voice garbled by the PA system. “Those of you who have younger siblings in the school and those of you whose parents checked off ‘Stay at school in the event of a weather emergency,’ please report to the office. The rest of you get home safely.”
Mme. Rizzoli turned away from the PA and faced the front of the room. “Okay — everyone walk, I repeat, walk to your lockers and collect your things. À demain.”
“À demain,” we repeated.
The entire class ran, rushing to the door all at once, ramming against each other, trying to be the first ones to spill out into the hallway. I waited at my desk for the crowd to thin out so I could leave at my own pace without pushing against anyone: I had nowhere to hurry to. Rochelle joined me as I headed out of the classroom and told me all of our friends were going to hang out at her place for the rest of the day. Was I coming?
“I can’t. My mom checked off the box,” I said.
“So? Just leave. You know these white-bread teachers don’t give a shit about what we do.”
The rest of our friends — Anita, Jordan, and Aishani — were at their lockers packing their things. Anita came over to us, twirling her straightened hair into a ponytail high up on her head.
“Nuh fret it, Chelle, you know she’s not gonna come. She too ’fraid of Mummy. Got her on lockdown and shit, she canna even run ’cross di street fi buy a patty at lunch.”
“Kara, I live two streets over from you,” Rochelle said. “Just come.”
I had never been to Rochelle’s house when her mother wasn’t around, and never for more than a couple of hours: my mother always called me home way before the other girls had to leave. And every time I was forced to leave, something good would happen: Truth or Dare or a scary movie on TV or a game of Nicky Nicky Nine Doors. The next day they’d all laugh about a moment I’d missed. I’d smile with them and then they would look at me, all of their eyebrows raised. “What’re you laughing at? You weren’t even there.” They would continue to giggle, and I would bite my lip and watch. To stay in the group, thick skin was a must — being able to take an insult was respected just as much as being able to throw shade.
Aishani and Jordan tilted their heads up in my direction. “So what’s going on, Kara?” they asked. “You coming?”
“Just come,” said Rochelle. “You never do anything.”
There were no adults in the hallway to see me leave and Rochelle was right: the teachers here really didn’t care about you if you weren’t a student in their class anyway. It wasn’t like my old school downtown on Ferndale Avenue, where everything and everyone was under watch. I’d had to beg my mother to transfer me out and away from those kids who were so eager to comment on my thick lips and grab fistfuls of my kinky hair; beg her to let me do my two years of junior high around the neighbourhood, around my friends from the block.
“If you get into any sort of trouble, I will pull you out and enroll you back downtown, you understand me?” she’d said. “That includes failing math.”
“Yes, Mummy.”
I looked back toward the stairs that led up to the office, rubbing my palm against the back of my neck.
“I told you she’d stay,” said Anita, smirking.
For once, I wanted to shock that smirk off her face. I turned to her. “Fuck it,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Anita narrowed her eyes as I opened my locker and started packing my things. Everyone had left the hallway except us. Rochelle and the rest were grouped together in a circle, wearing cropped winter jackets with fur-trimmed hoods, their hair freshly relaxed or pulled back into ringletted ponytails, their tight jeans tucked into suede boots that reached their knees. I didn’t look as good in my clothes as they did in theirs. I had no meat on my bones, no pout to my lips, and they were all starting to curve into that thickness Island boys loved, their eyebrows cocked in that flirty curiosity that got those boys’ attention.
“They’re faas,” my mother would say, “and one of them is going to end up pregnant. Just watch.”
Behind me, Jordan and Aishani were arguing over just how cute Jhamar, the student council president, was, Aishani rolling the R’s with her tongue every time. She was Indian, like from India Indian, but told any boy who swaggered up to her that she was Trini and explained that being born in Canada meant she couldn’t put on the accent. Once we asked her what the capital of Trinidad was. When she said Tobago we doubled over laughing, and later on that day she pulled me to the side to ask what was so funny about her answer.
I zipped up my jacket and swung my knapsack over my shoulder.
“Ay, look at this, Kara ah take charge! She think she a bad gyal for she break the rules dey,” said Jordan, laughing with Rochelle.
“She’ll probably cave halfway to your house and run back to school, Chelle.”
“Quiet, Anita. Yuh run yuh mouth too much,” I said.
“What’s this? Miss Canada gwine fi bust out the patois? Yuh need to stop Ja-fakin’ it, Kara.”
I opened my mouth to respond but felt my shoulders roll back, felt acrid spit fill my mouth, and knew I looked the way the women in my family did when they had a loud point to make. Trouble usually followed whenever they spoke in that stance, and I wasn’t up for that. I kept walking. I always lost when I went head-to-head with Anita anyway; her comebacks were harsher and her accent was better. Real. Not something she had to put on. The rest of us just cobbled together what we could from listening to our parents or grandparents, but Anita was fresh from Jamaica — there was no competing, especially when I had the weakest accent out of all the Canadian-borns.
We pushed through the doors and stepped out into the schoolyard. The snow had started to fall, light and fast and fluffy; it was good for packing, for snowmen and snowballs, but I wasn’t fooled. This was how all storms started. Gently.
We all tugged our hoods
over our heads, Rochelle and Anita squealing every time the snow dappled their straightened strands with wetness. Already, I could see the frizz coming out, kinky and tight, disrupting the silkiness they’d endured the hot comb for the night before. I grazed my palm over my scalp to see if my braids were still smooth. They weren’t, but it could’ve been worse.
Our school was right at Vaughan and Oakwood, hidden in one of the residential pockets in the centre of the area where the Caribbean and Europe converged. Once you left the playground you could turn right toward downtown and head to Little Italy on St. Clair West; but we were turning left up toward Eglinton West and Marlee: Island Town. The walk in either direction was mixed with both groups, though. Bungalow windows boasted the colourful banners of the Island flags: red, yellow, and green for Guyana; black, yellow, and green for Jamaica. Nonnas and nonnos crowded every other porch, teetering on rocking chairs, drinking beer or Brio Chinotto, their pit bulls snarling in the backyard.
“I can’t get my hood to stay on,” said Jordan, bunching up her jacket at the neck so that the snow wouldn’t get through the gap and melt on her chest.
“White girls can get their hair wet,” said Rochelle. “Stop frontin’ like you need your hood.”
The rest of us laughed, and Jordan gave us the finger. She was mixed. Her mother was black Guyanese and her father was Canadian. Seventh-generation Canadian, too, not Italian-Canadian or Portuguese or anything. She’d come out a light, light milky brown — almost beige — with a small pointed nose, hazel eyes, and hair that was short and auburn and kind of curly but mostly straight. The year before, she’d done a home spray tan to make herself darker but ended up making herself orange instead. I was the only one who knew that. I don’t know if it was because I didn’t go to school with everyone yet or because she knew I was too nice to say anything to anyone, but she’d told the others she couldn’t go to school because of the flu.
Frying Plantain Page 2