During my first week at Sip and Sup, I had worried that Mom or Dad would show up to check on me. Now I wished they would. Just to show the loafers outside that I had a normal family that didn’t keep to themselves, a family that dressed like everyone else and spoke English better than most.
The next morning, as I was leaving for school, I said, “Hey, Mom, why don’t you drop by the coffee shop today? There are nice muffins and donuts.”
“Oh, that would be perfect for my diet.” She gave me a little smile, but I jerked my head away before she could pinch my cheek.
All day at school, I tried to think of ways to deal with the loafers. Should I be friendly and force them to see that I was different from the cell boys? Or should I report them to Mr. Chum? I knew he did not approve of them hanging around outside his coffee shop. But what would I tell him? That they were calling me Terry? He would most likely laugh and make one of his jokes.
In the end, I decided I would ignore the loafers. So, as soon as I finished work, I put on my earphones, turned up the volume on my MP3 player, and hurried down the steps. But their voices cut through the music. Caterpillar man: “You wearing a listening device?” Short guy: “Yes, commander. I heard your orders. Over and out.”
I began to hate this caterpillar man. First, because I had tried to be friendly with him once. And second, because he seemed to be the leader. So, when I noticed that the old men got quiet whenever I was cleaning the floor next to their table, I blamed him. I also blamed him when I spotted the old ladies gazing at me with their thin lips pressed into stiff smiles. And I blamed him when a complete stranger yelled something nasty to me from a pickup truck.
I had once liked this little town for its coziness, but now I began to dislike it for the same reason. I could see how easy it would be for rumours to spread. Everyone knew each other. I started to wish that Dad would announce we were leaving for a town far away from Ajax. Maybe if I ganged up with Allison we might be able to persuade our parents to leave.
When I got home, I saw Mom and Allison in the kitchen. Mom was arranging a head scarf on my sister’s head. As soon as Allison went into her room, I asked Mom, “Why is Allison wearing a head scarf?”
Mom shrugged. “You know your sister. One new style after another.”
“But why now? And why a head scarf? It’s covering all her hair. Even her neck.”
Allison started to yell something from her room. But from the living room, Dad shouted, “Why not? She looks nice in it. And it’s not like she’s joining a cult or anything.”
But that was exactly what I thought. I was sure that the dollar store girl was responsible because she always wore a head scarf herself. I got angry with my sister for always being so easily influenced.
That night when my favourite television show, The Big Bang Theory, was on, I could not enjoy it. I kept thinking about how everyone was against me. Dad, for moving every few years. Mom, for still treating me like a child. Allison, for always trying to slip into a new identity. Even people who didn’t know me were against me. The loafers, for connecting me with the terrorist cell boys. The cell boys, for pretending they were some kind of super-villains. Ajax itself had plotted against me by fooling me with its nice, quiet appearance. And I was to blame, too, for never, ever knowing how to fight back.
Chapter Nine
I had just one choice: I had to leave my job at Sip and Sup. Yet I knew that doing so would not solve the problem. Ajax was too small, and I could run into the loafers elsewhere. Besides, I had caught complete strangers staring at me.
I got angrier and angrier at the loafers. One day in the library, I got so mad that I couldn’t work. I turned off the computer and looked through the window at the town hall.
Dad often said that, if only the army and the merchants in Uganda had been more patient with each other, his family wouldn’t have had to leave. But what was the use of this patience? To the coffee shop crowd, I looked just like the terrorist cell boys, so I had to be one of them.
How dare they? What gave them a special right to this country? How would they feel if someone accused them of something so horrible?
I was still really mad that evening and I mopped the Sip and Sup floor as if I were the Flash. Mr. Chum said, “Super speed nice for superhero. Bad for mopping floor.”
When I left, I did not wear my earphones. So I heard the caterpillar man clearly when he asked, “Done early, Terry? Going to meet your buddies?”
Words formed in my mind: No, I prefer to loaf around and waste time. But I knew that would sound just as childish and silly as one of my arguments with Allison. I didn’t hurry away like I usually did, so I overheard the short guy trying to imitate some foreign language.
The short guy’s noises reminded me of the language two brown boys at school used. One of the boys was in my English class. He was from Afghanistan, and he sat in the back row. Since September, he had been silent. Except for one time, when the teacher asked him a question. He didn’t know the answer. While everyone was waiting for him, he had banged down his book on his desk, got up, and walked out of the classroom.
Like everyone else in the class, I had been annoyed with the boy from Afghanistan. Now I admired him. I was sure the loafers wouldn’t pick on him, because he seemed ready for anything. Maybe his parents had taught him to fight instead of nonsense about politeness and self-control and good grades. Mom believed that the cure for everything was just fitting in. And I can’t even count the times Dad had said, “If you can dream of it, you can get it.” Yeah, sure. What was the use of being a dreamer when everyone else was awake?
This problem preyed on my mind. I thought of it during dinner, while Dad talked about his idol, the Aga Khan, who encouraged charity and all that. I thought of it during school, when I saw one of the boys from Afghanistan smoking behind the gym. And I thought of it each night on my way home from the coffee shop, with the words “Terry, Terry” ringing in my ears.
One evening, I saw the caterpillar man chatting with a woman who seemed about his age, twenty-four or so. I stood on the top step, pretending I was struggling to zip up my coat.
The woman was holding the hand of a little girl. She stood apart, as if she did not want to get too close to the caterpillar man. She pulled the child closer to her and said, “I’ve heard that before, Sid. Too many times.” In a louder voice, she added, “Look at her. She doesn’t recognize you anymore.”
Just then, the caterpillar man — Sid — noticed me staring. “What the fuck are you looking at?”
The woman said, “See, this is what I’m talking about.”
“You don’t know anything.” His voice sounded whiny.
The woman sighed. “I know that Lavinia doesn’t recognize you anymore.”
“And whose fault is that?”
“No one’s, Sid. It’s no one’s fault.” Her voice trailed off as she walked away in the opposite direction from me.
For once, this Sid man had nothing to say. I did not know why the young woman was so mad at him, but I was sure he deserved all of it.
Chapter Ten
For the next couple of weeks, I didn’t see the loafers. Maybe they had chosen another coffee shop or been kicked out of Ajax. At the same time, Allison was behaving very strangely, always in front of the computer with her head scarf pulled tightly over her head.
Dad felt her new style was an improvement over her Goth look, but I could tell that it worried Mom. During our dinner-time conversations, Mom talked about the terrible things happening all over the world. Wars, kidnappings, and never-ending conflict. She blamed crazy traditions for each of these troubles.
Allison responded only once. She said that it was just as wrong to believe in one solution to fix every trouble. Mom was shocked, I could tell.
That night, I gazed at the water stain on the ceiling just above my bed. It looked like a boat about to sink. When I blinked and looked again, it changed into a rocket pointing upwards. I played this game for five minutes or so, trying to surpri
se myself with each new shape. But soon my mind turned to the dinner conversation. I wondered if Allison had taken on her new look because the girls at school had called her names. If the girls were doing to her what the loafers outside Sip and Sup were doing to me. Or if wearing a head scarf was a passing phase, just like the others. Whatever the reason, at least she had a group of friends.
The next morning on our way to school, Allison hurried to catch up with her friends. The dollar store girl waved to me. During recess, I noticed the Afghanistan boy standing outside the back door. He was gazing at the playing field. “Hey,” I said.
“Hey.” He barely glanced at me and kept staring into the distance. I guessed he wanted to be alone. Maybe the playing field reminded him of something from his country. I walked away. Even though we were the same colour, we were not alike. Our memories were too different. I had lived my entire life in Canada. His accent was Afghani.
In Napanee, there had been a Sikh boy in my class. He was the only other brown person in the school. Once he had shown me a tiny dagger tucked away in his pocket, and he explained why he carried it. When he asked me about my religion, all I could tell him was that my parents were Ismaili Muslims. The only fact I knew about my religion was that Sufis were important. They were poets who composed special religious songs.
He wanted to know more. I quoted a couple of my father’s favourite Sufi verses, but that was the best I could do. Our friendship stalled at that point, maybe because he wished he hadn’t shown me his dagger. Or maybe he felt there was something fake about a boy who knew so little of his parents’ religion.
In the coffee shop, I felt really alone. The old ladies looked like pale ghosts that would soon disappear, the old men like forgotten statues. Even Mr. Chum reading his newspaper looked to me like a cardboard cut-out set against the counter. At the end of my shift, he said, “Nice trick. Sleeping standing up. Hah!” He closed his eyes and pretended to snore. When he opened his eyes, he asked, “Whatsa matter, alligator?”
“It’s nothing.” I wondered if when I got home my family would also have been replaced with strangers.
Mr. Chum glanced at the outside table normally occupied by the loafers. He rolled up his newspaper slowly. “We control the picture,” he said.
He returned to his newspaper, but I sensed his eyes on me while I put on my coat.
On my way home, I tried to understand what Mr. Chum meant. He often joked. Yet his voice had been serious. As I crossed the street at the corner of Harwood and Bayly, I realized that he had spoken with no trace of an accent. I had never heard this voice before. “We control the picture.”
Chapter Eleven
“We control the picture.” Mr. Chum’s strange statement got my mind off my other worries. What did he mean? And why did he — just that once — speak without any accent? His simple sentence seemed familiar somehow, yet I could not tell why. I puzzled over it in school and in the coffee shop. I started to ask him once, but I changed my mind when I heard him once more speaking with his Chinese accent to some customer.
Then, one day in the library, I recalled the opening of a television series I used to watch with Dad in Napanee: The Outer Limits. As it opened, a man with a thin voice would say, “There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling...” Each episode showed creatures that could change their shapes, or robots wanting to be humans, or aliens pretending to be ordinary families.
While I mopped and cleaned the coffee shop, I would glance at Mr. Chum, thinking about his remark. A couple of times, he caught me looking at him, and he returned to his newspaper without smiling or anything.
Yet Mr. Chum had become a more interesting person. Just from that simple statement. It reminded me of one of Dad’s mysterious quotes from Shakespeare: This is the tune of our catch, played by the picture of Nobody. I imagined a boy walking through a house with a hundred doors inside it. Each time he passed through a door, he was different in some way. He was a nobody because he could be whatever he wanted to be. The picture of nobody was the picture of someone who could change into anyone.
I almost forgot all my worries, but then, a few weeks later, I was brought back to earth. The woman I had seen Sid chatting with started coming to the Sip and Sup regularly. She would arrive with her child by midway through my shift. The other loafers always left as soon as she appeared, and Sid and the woman would talk seriously.
Sometimes the woman appeared to be pleading. Once when Sid tried to play with her little girl, she pulled the child away. She usually left about ten minutes before the end of my shift. Sid would remain there at the table, his head in his hands. He seemed to be talking to himself, and a few times, he got up and waved his arms, even though no one was with him.
Sid also acted meaner to me. Before, his nasty remarks seemed like jokes to amuse his friends, but now he seemed serious — and dangerous, even. He said things like, “Where the hell do you people keep appearing from?” and “I have my eyes on you. Just remember that. This ain’t Kabul.”
One evening, the argument between Sid and the woman seemed to be worse than usual. She didn’t sit for the entire half hour, and she held her girl tightly.
When she left in a huff, Sid clasped his hands at the back of his neck and bent low over the table. He seemed smaller, somehow, through the glass wall of the coffee shop. When I left, he was still in that same position. He said in a low voice, as if he was talking to himself, “Fucking Arab.” He made the word sound like “crab.”
I stopped in my tracks. “I’m not an Arab. I was born in Canada.” After a while, I added, “Just like you.”
“You’re nothing like me, buddy.”
“Yes, I know.”
He glared at me as if he couldn’t tell whether I had agreed with his statement or insulted him.
When I got home, Mom and Dad were in the dining room wearing their going-out clothes. “We are taking Allison to the Driftwood Theatre,” Mom said. “To see King Lear. Sure you don’t want to come along?”
I shook my head. “Too tired.”
“The weight of this sad time we must obey,” Dad said. “Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.”
Allison came out of her room as Dad was reciting the lines from the play. She rolled her eyes and, just for a moment, she looked like her old self.
“We will be back in two hours,” Mom told me. “Keep the door locked.”
As I dropped my backpack on the living room couch, I noticed the computer monitor glowing in the corner. I stared at Allison’s Barbie screen saver. At another time, I may have felt touched that this screen saver had remained her favourite through all of her different phases. Valley Girl. Skater Girl. Goth. Head-scarf Girl. But I was in a different mood. When I sat at the computer desk, I noticed that she had left her Facebook and e-mail accounts open.
What I did next was something I never would have done if I had thought it through. It was one of those acts a person commits because the chance will vanish swiftly. It reminded me of the thin, feathery thrill I felt during our hidden treasure hunts in primary school.
And I felt this thrill as I created a new e-mail account; as I pasted all of Allison’s contacts — there must have been more than fifty — into a viral e-mail; as I wrote that unbelievably nasty thing about “Sid who hangs out at Sip and Sup.” But just as quickly, the excitement began to fade. I pressed Send before I could change my mind, and then I deleted the new e-mail account.
Chapter Twelve
The next morning I tried to convince myself that those who received the e-mail would ignore it as childish and silly. In any case, nothing could be traced back to me because I had deleted the account.
Such was my mental state that I pretended I would never, ever write such a horrible e-mail. Surely, sending this message was just my fantasy of revenge. I tried to chase away the thought that what I had written might even be true.
Yet that evening I got a clue that I had really done something big. Even th
ough the loafers came to their usual spot, Sid did not turn up. Midway through my shift, the woman with the little girl came, and she talked to the group for a while. Although she remained there for close to fifteen minutes, none of the loafers ever looked up at her. I think they were glad when she left. They moved closer to each other and seemed to be whispering.
I didn’t see the loafers again until Friday. That day, a police car pulled up, and a pretty female officer walked over to them. The officer did most of the talking. Even though she got into her car after just three or four minutes, the conversation had seemed never-ending to me.
All sorts of questions ran through my mind. What was she asking them? What did they tell her? But the question that stuck throughout that night was: could the e-mail be traced back to me? Deep down, I knew the officer’s visit was connected to what I had written about Sid.
I tossed and turned almost all that night. Each time the single sentence tried to wriggle into my head, I made myself think of something else. I tried to think of how happy I had been in Fredericton. The students at my school there thought my brown face meant that I was Native. I wished I could still pretend to be someone else. Anyone who could not be connected with bombs and secret plots. But, I thought, it’s too late now. I had dug a deep hole and jumped straight into it.
I suffered day and night, but soon this worry was replaced by another. Although the loafers did not show up the next week, the woman with the girl did. She stayed by the usual table even after my shift was over, holding her child and staring into the distance.
One evening there was a snowstorm. The snow brightened up the street so much that I could clearly see everyone hurrying to their homes. I could see the cars driving by slowly. And I could see the woman sitting with her child as if she was stuck there and needed someone to pull her away. The little girl tried to do that once. She couldn’t make her mother move, so she sat at the end of the bench with her small arms folded against her chest. The large, twirling snowflakes looked to me like bleached cockroaches crowding the child. This scene felt like my punishment, yet I couldn’t look away. I got annoyed with myself because I was so warm and comfortable in the coffee shop.
The Picture of Nobody Page 3
