Bone and Bread

by Saleema Nawaz

  The demonstration is scheduled to start at three o’clock. I don’t yet see any sign of Libby. My stomach is unsettled enough to keep me away from the food table, but all around me the mood is light. The word being passed around is that the police are unlikely to get involved, and Evan agrees. He has turned up looking ill at ease in jeans and a black T-shirt, shaking his head to stave off any questions about why he has decided to come.

  “The police will hold off unless it gets violent,” he says. “No matter what, they’ll wait until most of the public has gone home. After all, part of justice is the appearance of justice.” He peers around. “Do they have coffee here?”

  “That’s cynical.”

  “Not really. Not if you believe that appearances can be deceiving.”

  “This is all some kind of end-justifies-the-means thing, then.”

  He points to a table with a large stainless steel urn where a small queue is forming, and he starts moving towards it. “Sometimes it does.” He looks at me. “You know it does.”

  That Evan’s morality would have complexity is something that hasn’t crossed my mind. I wonder for the hundredth time what Sadhana would have made of him. She had a way of summing people up that I never could manage. Uncle was a stodgy vassal, Ravi a shirking coward, or sometimes a fetal pig. Quinn as a little kid was, more often than not, a jam-fisted monkey. Whether she could see these realities or created them, the effect was the same: she knew the world better than I did.

  Evan returns, not with one coffee but two, a gesture that might be nothing but politeness but to me feels more like a valentine. I brush his fingers as I take the cup and he gives me a tight smile.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, and it comes out in a whisper. The crowd is starting to fall silent in response to some setup activity on the front steps of the building.

  “I know,” he says at a normal volume. “But I need to absorb all this.”

  I don’t know if he means my flailing attempt at extortion or Ravi’s being back in the picture, but it’s a fair plea either way. Evan may be the most reasonable person ever to be angry with me.

  “Absorb all what?” I ask anyway. I understand the problem of integrating new facets into a picture of a whole personality. If I knew what to make of Libby’s confession, I could share it with Evan, but I’m afraid of how he’ll react. I can hardly imagine what he might think of her negligence. What I’ll start to think.

  “I need time,” says Evan, “to absorb how secretive you are.” His voice is matter-of-fact, but his face is glum. “How untrusting.”

  The demonstration formally begins with a series of speeches in both English and French, but for me, all the tense energy of the event seems to locate itself in the three inches separating me from Evan. I tug on his sleeve. “Don’t be mad.”

  Evan sighs. He takes one hand from his cup as if to touch my shoulder, but ends up dropping it into his pocket. “Let’s just be patient with each other, shall we?”

  There are vans from both the English and French media parked around the square, and two men shouldering television cameras aimed at the makeshift podium. A member of the Algerian community talks about Bassam Essaid’s struggle to leave that country and his efforts to assist other refugees and new immigrants. A representative from Amnesty International condemns the deportation order. Then Anne-Marie gets up on behalf of No Borders to talk about the exclusionary principles of the immigration system and the lack of basic rights faced by migrant workers. When she finishes speaking, a young man mounts the steps of the immigration building and leads the crowd in a chant culminating in claps and cheers, whistling and the waving of signs. Through a squealing megaphone, he encourages everyone present to stick around until the tribunal hearing is over, to show solidarity with the Essaid family. I check my watch and see that the hearing is not scheduled to begin for another fifteen minutes.

  As the demonstration prepares to enter a holding pattern, the silence stretched out for the speeches starts to perforate as individual conversations begin to materialize here and there throughout the crowd. Then Evan says, “Do you hear that?”

  Somewhere beyond the square, there is the sound of a march, another megaphone call-and-response being carried out by a group approaching in the distance. “Latecomers?” I say, just as they round the corner to the square.

  It is a rally on the move, smaller and older, on the whole, than the group already occupying the square. A chorus of boos goes up, but hemmed in near the centre, I am not close enough to see what is happening.

  “People opposed,” guesses Evan.

  Our attention is distracted from the new arrivals when a black Mercedes zooms up the street between the park and the government block, causing a commotion along the edge of the throng where people had started drifting off the sidewalk. The driver gets out to hold open the door, and the man who emerges from the car is Ravi, dressed in a suit and tie, dark hair shiny and slicked just so. A young woman climbs out from the other side and establishes a portable microphone and PA system on the steps before disappearing through the doors of the immigration building, trailing a coil of extension cord.

  “Who’s that now?” says Evan.

  “That’s him,” I say, exaltation coming to me in a rush. “That’s Quinn’s father.”

  Ravi must truly be scared of exposure, I realize, to reverse his position on Bassam Essaid. He mounts the steps and adjusts the microphone stand. I can’t spot Quinn, and I grab Evan’s arm for leverage to get up on my tiptoes and scan the crowd.

  “That’s him?” says Evan, shaking me off as he raises his elbow to cup his eyes against the sun. He sounds bewildered. I make a motion for him to be quiet, and from the corner of my eye I see his back stiffen. Every question I let fall by the wayside is like a little bit of love, let go.

  As soon as Ravi starts to speak I realize he has not come to support the Essaids. He introduces himself, mentioning that he is a political candidate. Speaking first in French, he hits a rhetorical rhythm I recognize from televised debates, a predictable cadence as penetrating as a light rain, before repeating himself in English. No matter what the language, I find it hard to focus.

  “I am here at the request of my voters, who want to ensure that Quebec is a safe place for the newcomers we welcome.”

  “Did you know he would be here?” Evan is looking back and forth between me and Ravi, as if he is not sure which of us is the real source of his concern.

  “No.” I want to kiss Evan, to soothe away his unease, but his whole face forbids me. There is some kind of insecurity there, or maybe even jealousy. “Maybe I could have guessed if I’d thought about it.”

  Spotting Quinn across the square, I can tell that his father’s appearance is unexpected for him, too. He is staring at Ravi with a fixed, hard look. Caro, at his side in a polka-dot dress, is filming.

  “At Quebec First, we are pro-immigration. My own parents came to this country before I was born, and together they made a life here. Quebec was a place where they could flourish. What we want is to pace immigration at a rate that will allow new immigrants to acclimatize to our culture and values. So that they, too, can have a chance to flourish.”

  A woman shouts, “So why do you want to spend three percent of our GDP to increase the birth rate?” Someone on the other side of Evan asks, not loud enough, “Why is your motto ‘Reconquer Quebec’?”

  “Raising the birth rate is a simple question of economics, madam.” I miss Ravi’s elaboration on this concept, jostled as I am by a stream of people exiting the square. When Ravi returns to his subject, emphatic now that the bulk of the crowd is against him, he says, “Bassam Essaid is a self-proclaimed atheist, who is preying on our religious conventions in order to flout the laws of this country.”

  “Who wrote this for him?” I say. “Flout?” I am jeering instead of breaking calm, trying to figure out how to make good on my threats, and if they matter. Qu
inn is the one who matters now, not my vendetta and maybe not even the truth. Given Libby’s confession, I now believe Ravi when he said he never spoke to my sister again. Yet he seems so cowardly up there, appealing to the very worst in people’s natures.

  But Evan is no longer beside me to answer.

  Ravi has one hand admonishing the air. “Bassam Essaid is exploiting our goodwill, our naiveté. If we allow this to stand as a precedent, there is no telling the kinds of criminals, the kinds of terrorists, who will be using these methods to come and stay in our country. Take it from me, now is the time for us to start cleaning house.”

  Booing starts in earnest as an accompaniment to the existing heckling. Ravi has grown up to be what I suppose he always was. Short-sighted, conservative, and conceited. Sadhana despised him from the beginning, based only on the most cursory acquaintance. She saw, too, in a way I didn’t, how willing I was to throw everything over, to toss away my whole life for the promise of one boy’s affection.

  Back behind the dwindling section of people still standing at attention, I wander into a diffuse group, still lingering at the food table or spread out on the squashed lawn, waiting for news of the tribunal. Evan is nowhere in sight, but I spot Libby sitting on the grass with her daughter. I think I draw nearer because I am curious, or still waiting for the arrival of some deferred reaction. Something like a purposeful rage.

  Libby has Mouse between her legs, tucking dandelions into the elastics around her pigtails. She looks up at me with a wan face as I approach, but she seems calm and somehow ready for anything I might say. Her hair has been brushed until it is shining.

  “You’re here,” she says.

  “For what it’s worth.” With Ravi present, it is hard to keep track of the aim of the demonstration, let alone gauge its effectiveness.

  Mouse grabs both of us and lays out her dandelion crown for Libby’s approval.

  “Beautiful, baby,” says Libby. I concur. Then Mouse dons her crown and holds out her cupped palm.

  “Lucky penny, Mummy,” she says, and Libby digs out a coin from her pocket and gives it to her.

  “For the fountain,” Libby says to me, as Mouse runs off towards the square’s ornamental centrepiece. “For wishing.”

  The penny is a bright speck against the grey sky as Mouse tosses it into the water. Then our attention is drawn away as the chanting starts up again, seemingly in relation to the smaller group of people who arrived just before Ravi and who are the only ones giving him bursts of enthusiastic applause. A line of protestors from the main demonstration is forming to prevent them from entering the square, and there is shouting from both sides that I can’t make out. Ravi has stopped talking, although the association between him and the bulk of the dissenting group is not altogether clear. Some of them are carrying signs that read IMMIGRANTS LÉGAUX SEULEMENT and QUÉBEC POUR LES QUÉBÉCOIS. I see him approaching the standoff between the two lines, encouraging people to disperse.

  “Boys,” says Libby, with a dismissive air. She holds out her wrist to me. Her palm is the colour of the papery husk of a ground cherry. Gooseberry lanterns, that’s what Mama called them. It is also deeply lined. “Smell,” she says.

  I oblige. I detect lemon, a trace of sandalwood and sweet musk. My nose brushes her skin.

  “This is the perfume she was wearing,” she says, “those last few weeks. Sadie.” She pulls her arm back into her sleeve. “I bought it for her.”

  Mouse has returned. Libby hugs her, holding her tight and teasing her corkscrew curls until the girl starts to squirm. Then Libby lets go, and her daughter flees towards the clown, who is now twisting balloon animals in spite of the light drizzle that has begun to fall.

  Libby is waiting for me to say something, to accuse or absolve her. Or tell her what I’m going to do with her confession.

  I’m sure my voice is going to come out shaky, but it sounds normal. “What do you think is going to happen with the tribunal?” I ask. Looking past her, I see Evan at last, moving away from the front, stopping to pet dogs and chatting with some of the protesters. There is a bloom of colour all around us as people begin donning rain jackets and opening umbrellas.

  “I don’t know.”

  There is a tussle going on at the edge of the square now. A couple of the younger people on either side of the standoff are grappling each other’s forearms as they each try to push back the opposite side, a grim game of Red Rover. Libby shifts away slightly, angling herself to face a line of police mustering at the other end of the street.

  “We should get out of here,” I say.

  But Libby doesn’t seem to be listening. “Beena,” she says, “I didn’t throw out the diary. I read it.” She looks more ashamed than I ever felt about reading Sadhana’s diary when we were teenagers. “Sadie wasn’t angry with you. And she wasn’t sick. She was trying to do what she thought was the right thing.”

  “Really.” It comes out as scoffing, but I register a jolt of hope.

  “Yes, really,” says Libby. Turning back to me, she reaches for my arm but falls short, as though only managing the ghost of the gesture she wishes to make. “She just didn’t want anyone to know until she had it all figured out.” Libby slips her hand into her bag and pulls out a slim green notebook. “Here.” She presses it into my hands.

  “What do you mean?” I rub my thumb along the diary’s soft paper cover with its pattern of cherry blossoms. Then, when a raindrop darkens the green with a wet splotch, I clutch it to my chest.

  “She wanted to take care of it all for you,” says Libby. “Everything to do with your son and Ravi — she wanted to protect you from that. Look after you in the one way she could.” Her voice, for once, is soft. “You know, the way you looked after her.”

  I know what she says must be borne out by the notebook, or she wouldn’t have given it to me. Libby’s words and Sadhana’s plan coalesce into a kind of dizziness of relief.

  The diary is such a small thing, now that I’m holding it.

  I thrust it back at her.

  But Libby steps back, shaking her head. “Living with what happened, even without that around . . .” She slips her hands into her back pockets, as though to keep them at bay. “No, I don’t want it.”

  “But you were together.” And when I hear myself say it, I really understand it for the first time. “There must be things in there, maybe, that matter.”

  Libby nods. “Lovely things.” Her lips tremble. “But those parts I know by heart.”

  Twenty yards down the street, riot police beat on their shields with nightsticks. After this drumming menace, they begin to march in our direction. People all around us are scrambling to their feet to get away. Libby looks around and leaves me with an apology as she hurries over to Mouse, who is being herded away by the clown to the opposite side of the trees.

  I get up and walk away towards the fountain, past the peripheral blur of a black dog, unleashed and bounding after the children. The diary is in my hands and yet I don’t think I want it. Relieved as I am, I’m still afraid of what else it might say about me. Sadhana’s other diaries have been sealed up, unread, in a box, and maybe that is where this one belongs, too.

  It’s raining harder, the square emptying of people. The fountain, surrounded just a few minutes ago, is already deserted, and as raindrops strike the water, they generate a rippling mass of circles that radiate and overlap. Spouting iron fish froth the pool from the centre, and drawing near enough to hear the soft bubbling of the water, I remember the moment of lightness I’d felt, releasing Sadhana’s ashes to the river.

  I shift my weight from one foot to the other. There is a comfortable kind of loneliness is a place that belongs to everybody. Looking to the dark bottom of the granite basin, I see its precious coating of coins bright and dull, the tokens of hundreds of wishes. I feel in my pocket for change and find nothing except some Kleenex. But the diary is in my hand
, a light, flat rectangle with so much of my hope riding on it.

  I toss it in the fountain with a flick of the wrist, and it only takes a moment to sink to the bottom.

  Before I can register what I’ve done, I hear the charged bark of a megaphone and Evan emerges from somewhere to grab me by the elbow. He helps me scramble out of the way as the police move in, faster than I would have guessed, from the adjoining side. He uses one arm to steer us back through the remaining crowd and the other to keep a tight lock on me.

  “They’re reading the riot act,” says Evan. We are making slow progress to the edge of the park that hasn’t already been hemmed in. “We’ve got to disperse.”

  Behind us, I can hear the outraged cries of people being arrested. Locating Quinn and Caro beyond the northwest corner of the square, Evan ensures that we are all together and accounted for.

  “Mom, you okay?”

  Standing next to my son, I can almost feel the bleakness coming off him. “Are you?” He nods.

  “I saw someone get wrestled into handcuffs,” says Evan. “Looks like he took a couple of bad punches.”

  “From who?” says Quinn.

  Evan ignores the question, which means it was the cops. To me, he says, “You don’t look so good either.”

  I hardly know how I feel. But there is too much to explain. “I’m fine,” I say.

  Evan reacts to the lie by taking his leave. “Call me later if you want to talk.” He seems both rueful and amused. I hope there is enough time left to us to exercise the patience we talked about. “Bye, Quinn.”

  “Bye.” My son watches him walk away before pulling me into step with him and Caro.