The Amazing Absorbing Boy

by Rabindranath Maharaj

  That sentence remained with me and while she was baking some pecan pies, I asked why she believed this. “Listen, boy. Who in their right mind would prefer to live in an old house doing the same thing day after day after day? Wearing the same clothes. Cooking the same food. Thinking the same thoughts. Day after day. Nothing nice to remember and nothing nice to look forward to. What sort of life is that? Always waiting, always waiting.” She sounded a bit like the stern old Auntie but a few minutes later, she added, “She would have been happy to know that you living here now. God bless her soul.” That sparked out a couple of hymns. It sounded as if she was praising God for giving her this opportunity in her old age.

  A couple years ago I had heard her telling my mother, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh, and about thirteen days after she appeared outside the door, I felt she had reached the end of the giveth phase. Out of the blue, my father popped up. They began to quarrel ten minutes later, as if they were picking up from where they had left off in Trinidad. It started when Auntie asked him if he was still sinning or had found it in his heart to repent. He replied that he must be still sinning because her visit was a heavy punishment. Then she started to complain about the condition she found the house in and he told her she was free to leave if she didn’t like it. They went on for close to half an hour like that. Finally Auntie walked away and turned on the television. That night though, she didn’t look at her makeover shows but kept moving from channel to channel. And when my father stormed past her to the balcony for his smoke, she got up and went into the bedroom. I saw my father flicking his butt over the railing and then peeping inside. “Where she went?”

  “To sleep.”

  “The damn nastiness. In my own bed. What happen to all the generosity and sacrifice she always quacking about? Hypocrite.”

  I didn’t tell him that, in spite of all of Auntie’s faults, she was still far better company than him.

  From the room came the sound of Jesus loves me, this I know. That night I had to coil up on a corner of the foam because my father was sleeping next to me. I fell asleep with him grumbling and cursing about hypocrites.

  That was the pattern every single day. In a way, it reminded me of some of the Mayaro families and I wondered if the neighbours were able to hear Auntie telling my father he was the cause of my mother’s death, and he saying that he now figured out that she used her umbrella to hide from God, and she hitting back with a parable about Joshua and Jericho and tumbling-down walls and fake illnesses. On and on and on. Once she picked up her umbrella and pointed it at him like the Penguin. “This workman-pokeman scheme going to give you a seat right next to the devil. Mark my word!” I would like to say that the situation was better when my father was away but during these periods Auntie would now warn me about idleness and worthlessness. “Philandering” was a word she used all the time. Her old scratch-up, complaining voice came back too.

  One evening I tried to cheer her up. “These lights on the buildings outside really look like jewels.”

  “Souls burning up,” she said flatly.

  And this was the start. From then, all the sweetmouth about Canada came to an end. She still collected all her newspapers but instead of talking about the cleanness or the flowers and squirrels in the park, she would ask me, “You ever notice that all the people who get in accident or fall from building or get burn up or drown in some lake, have foreign names?” Or “You ever notice how nobody willing to smile back at you? Some of these people in the park can’t recognize a blessing if it run up and bite them.” I couldn’t understand why she was turning against the country just because things weren’t working out between her and my father. It was almost like she was taking out all her vexation on this place, which less than a week earlier, she could find nothing bad about. Now nothing could please her. She complained about the urine smell in the hallway and children smoking on the stairs and one night, with a heap of clothes in her hand, she asked if the basement laundry room also doubled as a drugstore. “Smoking-poking all over the place.” Even the television shows she had enjoyed so much began to eat her up.

  “Look at these girls,” she told me one evening. “Stooping to any level just to win a little prize. Fighting and complaining and backbiting just like … I better bite my tongue, yes.” She took off her hat and fanned her face tiredly. “Everything is always a big competition. Fight-fight win-win.” Another day she was flipping channels idly when she said, “In some countries, people have respect for their elders but not here. Not here at all.” I remembered her earlier statement about old people but said nothing. “Hello. I don’t think so. Talk to the finger.” I had to laugh at her imitation and the way she pushed out her hand and waggled her head like one of the black girls on the show. She gave me a hard look like if I was somehow involved with the group of teenagers who were criticizing their parents with a tall glasses-woman who looked like a lonely bird.

  I can’t pick out the exact moment when she turned against me but I soon noticed that she began to lump my father, Canada, the people in the park and on TV, the condition of the Regent Park buildings, and me, into one big frustrating ball. One night soon after an argument with my father, she screamed out, “Oh Lord Jesus! I could feel this cold seeping inside my bones. Eating me out from the inside.” I jumped and wished I could follow my father out of the apartment but felt it would be disrespectful to leave her alone. That night she baked for hours. From my foam, I heard her slapping the flour and singing her hymns so angrily, I felt she was chasing out all the bad spirits from around her. When my father got back late in the night, she was still bawling out her hymns. To tell the truth, I think this got him a little frightened because he went quietly to the television instead of putting up an argument. When Auntie saw him there, she said in the same tune with her singing, “He sitteth alone and keepeth silence, because he hath borne it upon him. Gadarene swine!”

  The next night when I returned from work, she was gone. The place smelled of cinnamon and on the cupboard were all kinds of cakes and pies and buns. The bottom shelf of the fridge was also filled with baked potatoes and eggplant, and when I closed the door the letter she had stuck there with a dollar store magnet fell to the ground.

  When my father returned in the night, he noticed all the baked stuff and asked me about my aunt. I told him she had returned to Trinidad. “Why? She used up all her bad-mindness?” He went on like that for close to half an hour, talking about how all these old miserable Presbyterians from Trinidad always thought they were one step away from the white people just because they had learned a couple hymns and could eat with knife and fork. I don’t know what these Presbyterians ever did to him because he continued on about how they were always with their hats and umbrellas just like these old missionaries they admired so much even though the sun only bounced off people like my auntie. “Sun don’t have any effect on tar,” he said nastily. “The blacker people is, the more they does run from the sun.” While he was carrying on, I thought of showing him the sheet Auntie had left on the fridge that had stated simply: They have sown the wind and they shall reap the whirlwind. And beneath, in smaller letters: But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.

  I didn’t know if it was a question or some Bible proverb or meant for my father or me or something she had dug up after the bus driver and then her musician disappeared.

  I have to say I missed her more than I could have imagined. I don’t know if it was her baking or whether she reminded me of Trinidad and my mother, or just for spite, because my father hated her so much. Sometimes I would look at her old mash-up umbrella she had left behind and remember how all her sweetmouth about Canada had changed the minute my father returned to the apartment.

  It took less than a week for my father to get back to his old self. During the last days of Auntie Umbrella’s visit he had acted a little frightened of her loud hymns but now he would constantly complain about hypocrites. I wondered if there was anyone who ever pleased him. He couldn’t sta
nd Auntie Umbrella who was his own sister, he hated Uncle Boysie, and he acted as if he wished I was not around. Which left just my mother.

  At Petrocan I began to pay attention to the middle-aged couples. While I was filling their gas tanks I watched their gestures and sometimes when they slid closer, even though I could not hear their words I felt they were saying kind things to each other. Two weeks after Auntie Umbrella left, I asked my father, “Did you like Mummy at all?”

  He was before the television and I saw him stiffening. “What you say?”

  I had rushed home and asked the question quickly before I could change my mind. Even though I was sure he had heard me, I repeated the question.

  He pulled up a leg and adjusted a sock. “That is what you and the Presbyterian use to be discussing all day? That is the assness she put in your head?” He asked his questions in a stupid drawl. I noticed a hole in the sock’s heel.

  From that point I felt I couldn’t stand him. I hated the slurping sound he made at the kitchen table, his slippers dragging on the kitchen tiles, his foolish advice to the television characters, the constant coughing in the nights, hawking and spitting over the balcony, grumbling about every single thing. I wondered if my mother had also hated these disgusting sounds or if he was more courteous in those days. Maybe if he had lived with us in Mayaro I would have grown accustomed and it would not have upset me so much. But not now. Not now.

  There were times when I felt I should slide out of my Trinidadian habit to become more like these television teenagers. Put him in his place good and proper. Loose some good curses on him. But I remembered all my mother’s lectures about respecting older people, even those she hated, like the fisherman, Matapal. For her part, she always stepped out of the kitchen when the fisherman was around. I decided to do the same thing—but I would go one step further. I knew my father hated the genie and his handler for I would often hear him grumbling whenever he spotted them from the balcony. So on my way from work, whenever I spotted the couple on a bench and noticed my father’s cigarette glinting on the balcony, I would stop to chat. I didn’t care that he would later scream, “Cult! Cult. I surrounded by cultist.”

  Chapter Eight

  DILARA AND PETROMAN

  My father’s talk of cultists actually made the genie and his handler more interesting, and during our nightly chats outside the apartment I would ignore the handler’s boring comments and think instead of Ra’s al Ghul, Batman’s nemesis who slept in a Lazarus Pit that made him live forever. Both men resembled the villain too.

  “Before we didn’t exist. Now we are everywhere, you understand …” Ah, but I have discovered that your pit is in a dungeon below the Toronto Necropolis.

  “We cannot be ignored anymore …” Batman can still beat you any day.

  “Hatred is no worse than indifference …” Your own daughter Talia hates you.

  “Young people such as yourself must resist the temptations that are all around …” Resist? Ha ha ha. Release the hounds!

  “Gobble-gooky.” Gobble-gooky to you, buddy.

  I knew all of this was childish: at Petrocan I had seen boys who seemed my age smoking and driving and confidently hugging their girlfriends but the minute I entered my father’s apartment and heard him grumbling about cults and (of all things) no-good foreigners, I felt the little chats were worth it. “They will reel you in like a catfish.” For a second I felt there was a tiny bit of concern, then he added, “They looking especially for green jackasses like you.”

  This was so interesting I carried the game to the gas station. One evening I asked Paul, “You ever heard of the Lazarus Pit?”

  He thought for an instant. “It’s somewhere on the north coast of Newfoundland.”

  “I think it’s below the Necropolis.”

  “Could be a decoy.”

  And another evening: “Have you ever seen a genie?”

  I never knew there were so many mysterious lamps and corked bottles strewn all over Newfoundland’s coast. While I was walking home I wondered what I would demand if I was given three wishes by a genie. When I was younger, I always wished for the power to fly or super strength or coming out first in my class at Mayaro Composite but now I felt that my first wish would be for my mother to still be alive. My second would be for my father to suddenly take an interest in me and notice my Timex and talk about his time alone in Canada and take me to hockey games and wrestling matches. These two concerns were always on my mind so it took a while before I could come up with a third wish. Finally, I decided that I would ask for an opportunity to meet Dilara from the Coffee Time.

  Three days later, I saw her. Seriously. She was in the back seat of a car driven by a man in clothing like the genie’s. At first, I couldn’t be sure but when the genie and his handler walked over to the car, opened the door and went in I got a good look at the frightened face in the back seat. There was no doubt. In the apartment my father said, “Reel you ass in good and proper.” I couldn’t play the game that night. What was Dilara doing here? When she had disappeared from the coffee shop, I felt I would never see her again as this city was so big. My father was still grumbling about cults and catfish then it hit me: the Coffee Time was just a few minutes from here so she must live nearby. Why hadn’t I thought of this before?

  The next night I rushed home, running part of the way, but the bench was empty. I hung around for a while before I sat. A couple teenagers in hoodies and slack pants were smoking next to the big garbage unit. I saw them glancing at me sitting alone. One of the group, a young woman with a nose ring and a sweater with the name of some basketball team on it walked over and asked for a light. I told her I did not smoke and she pushed her hands in her pocket and stared at me for a while before she walked away with a bouncy, wide-apart stride like a boy. A cigarette was tossed from our balcony, its glowing end sprinkling in tiny sparks as it landed on the curb. I was about to leave when the black car pulled up. Dilara was sitting in the back seat as before. The genie got out and walked to the lobby’s door but his handler stood by the car for a while, talking with the driver. I walked over to the curb but the car pulled off, taking Dilara away, and I couldn’t say whether she had noticed me. I held open the building door while the handler guided the genie to the elevator. Both men spoke in a strange language before the elevator stopped at the third floor.

  Later: “Bait. Bait! You little jackass.” I didn’t have time for my father as I was wondering why the pair had chosen a foreign language. What secrets were they hiding?

  The following night I waited by the curb instead. A cigarette almost landed on my head. I didn’t know what my next move would be when I spotted the black car. The genie got out and held out his hand. I helped him up the curb and to the door while his handler chatted with the driver. He held on to my hand and I wanted to shrug him off and wave to Dilara. Another cigarette floated down. I wondered if my father was really trying to burn me of just wanted me to know he was watching my every move from the balcony.

  That night the handler invited me into his apartment. Or rather, he held the elevator’s door open after the genie had exited and I followed the pair. The apartment was really tidy and packed with frilly hooked mats on the wall and different types of lamps near to the sofa and the bookcase and the computer table. Behind the lamps were nice plants with jumbled vines and small scattered leaves that looked like dried coins. The genie was grinning at me as if my presence in his apartment was a big joke. His handler pointed to the couch and when I sat, he pulled the chair from the computer table.

  He told me his name. It sounded like Bungavalla or Bunglevalley or something. Then he said it was good that I didn’t hang out with the teenagers loitering around the compound and I recalled how he had fixed me with a strict look when Canella and I were leaving the compound. These teenagers were rude and disrespectful, he continued, even though many of their parents had come from “good countries.” This place we were living in was a trap because there were too many temptations. I didn’t know if h
e was talking about Regent Park or Canada. He pulled out a book from the nearby shelf and stared at its spine. From the corner of my eyes, I saw a woman walking to the kitchen, which surprised me because I had never ever seen her before. I think my mind was on the woman when Mr. Bunglevalley began a story. It was about a family of immigrants. They had come to Canada many years ago and had a hard time because of all the unfriendly customs and also because no one would hire the husband. They lived with their three children in a tiny one-bedroom apartment. Finally, the husband got a night job five or six buses away. He was a hard worker and when other people in the factory were at home, he would stay for extra shifts. Mr. Bunglevalley told me as if he was delivering a lecture, “Everything he did, you understand, was for the sake of his children. All the sacrifices.”

  The genie nodded as if he understood and I did the same. “Years passed.” Mr. Bunglevalley gestured to the window as if this family was just outside, peeping in. “The sacrifice began to pay off. The children did well at school and were accepted at prestigious universities. Then they began to weaken.”

  The woman came over and placed a tray on the coffee table. I felt I should tell her hello or something but she did not look at me and walked back quickly to the kitchen. Mr. Bunglevalley went over and brought the tray to me and I took a small fancy teacup. The tea was bitter and yet sweet with an aftertaste of some spice. “How does it taste?”