This Innocent Corner

by Peggy Herring

  Please send me word, however brief. It’s a terrible thing not to know what’s happened to people you care about so much.

  Please let me know also if there is anything I can help you with. I feel so helpless being so far away.

  I send my love to you all, especially Luna. Tell her I would love to receive word from her.

  Best wishes,

  Robin

  PS Everything is fine for me, though I will worry until I hear from you.

  I folded the fragile blue sheet of air mail paper in three, put it in an envelope on which I had already written the Chowdhury’s street address, and took it to the post office to mail. I expected Amma to write back as soon as she could. She was dependable.

  From my new home in Canada, I waited for a letter. But nothing came. Perhaps mail service was disrupted. It was easy to imagine a letter lost in the post-war chaos. Then again, maybe no letter had been sent – yet. Maybe the family needed a couple of months to regroup and get over the trauma. What had happened to Shafiq in all the ruckus? No doubt he was back on the job, scowling and slopping soup once more on the tablecloth.

  When no letter came, I thought maybe Amma had sent it to my father’s address instead. So, I called him. Every week, I called him to ask. But the answer was always the same. By the time the lilacs bloomed alongside the rusty wire fence that demarcated our unkempt backyard, Dad’s words were predictable. “Sorry, Roo, not yet.” I tried to be patient, but restlessness dogged me. I would not feel settled until I heard from someone in Dhaka.

  I thought about going to visit Dad. The muddy spring air in Toronto smelled just like Lansing’s. But I was nervous. There was no way Graham could have crossed the border. As for me going alone, no one knew the risks faced by a draft dodger’s wife trying to re-enter the United States. American immigration might stop me at the border for questioning about Graham, and then it was hardly far flung speculation to say I could be detained for the sole purpose of luring him back. In those days, the authorities stooped low as slugs. All summer, I delayed the trip, unable to make up my mind.

  A year had passed since I’d left Michigan, and still I had no firm plans to return. “I’ve half a mind to come up there myself,” Dad said. “Have to wait for the next school vacation though.”

  “Love to see you, Dad, but be careful. The FBI is probably tracking you, too.”

  Graham landed a regular, full-time job at a bakery, and we were able to move out of the ghetto and into a cheap one-bedroom apartment. I became pregnant. Graham wept, the bakery owner sent a coffee cake whose cinnamon made me nauseous. I thought about Shaheed. Had he married, too? Maybe he was expecting a child of his own as well.

  When I told Dad he said, “Good work, Roo. Now I’ve got to come. I’ll ask about a ticket at Christmas.”

  But there was a huge snowstorm that December. The wind sculpted magnificent drifts around whatever stood in its way. Roads and airports were closed throughout Michigan, New York and southern Ontario. “We can hardly get out the front door of the building, Dad. The whole city’s shut down. You better wait.”

  “Easter then. Is Easter too late?”

  “We’ll count on it then.”

  Hormones raging, I had the strangest dreams throughout my pregnancy. In one, my mother, decked out in my father’s favourite track suit and cleats, was selling shoes from a street stall in Dhaka. Overjoyed, I hugged her and cried, “What are you doing here?” She, however, could not understand me. She spoke a language I knew was Bangla, yet the words made no sense to me either. She kept thrusting a pair of yellow rubber chappals under my nose. I kept pushing them away. When the frustration became too great, I awoke.

  By January, I was very worried about Amma and Luna. The war had ended a year ago. Why hadn’t anyone written? I knew about the casualty figures from the Liberation War. But, I reasoned, Luna and Razzak would have left before the mass exodus following the March 25th massacre. They’d be across the Indian border before most people had a chance to pack. Besides, they were smart, and in possession of good, hard cash; if caught in a tight situation, they could buy their way out. As for Amma and Mr. Chowdhury – even Hasan – I eventually convinced myself they were okay, too. With Hasan’s street knowledge, Mr. Chowdhury’s political connections, and Amma’s instinct for avoiding even the slightest danger, they would be all right.

  I simply didn’t understand why they hadn’t written to say so.

  I let the Chowdhurys fade from my conscious memory when my swollen belly became too big to ignore. At the end of my second trimester, I planned for Dad’s visit which, with any luck, would coincide with the birth. “You’ll love Toronto,” I said. “But please be careful. I’d hate for anything to happen.” I dreaded the thought of the FBI somehow holding my father responsible for our decision. Who knew what those thugs might do to him?

  As it turned out, something did happen, but not what any of us expected. Dad disappeared a week before his Easter holiday. He didn’t show up for an evening softball game in a small town about forty minutes outside Lansing. The team played on regardless, won, and returned home. It wasn’t until he also failed to show up for work on Monday morning that alarm was raised.

  Adele called. “All of the hospitals have been contacted. The police have started looking.”

  “Keep me posted,” I said. It was not like Dad. I pressed the baby with my palms and she kicked back.

  He was found the next afternoon, about twenty miles outside of Lansing, behind the wheel of his half-submerged car concealed in a creek lined with willow trees. The police guessed he had swerved to avoid a deer on the roadside, but there was no way to tell for certain. The paramedics thought he had been dead about two days, but the hospital assured me, no, he had been killed instantly, his neck snapped on impact.

  The baby was due in ten days.

  “The funeral’s Good Friday,” said Adele. “Practically the whole city’s going.”

  I ran to the doctor’s office, though I fully understood my options. If I went, there was the obvious risk that I would go into labour on the road. There was, for me, the bigger risk that my child would be born in the US – and I had no idea what chain of events that might lead to.

  “Go,” said Graham. In our bed, he held me, one arm around my shoulders, the other encircling my belly, while the weighty silence of the neighbourhood threatened to swallow us. “Screw those fucking officials.”

  But we were so paranoid then. Anything, especially if it was unthinkably brutal, seemed possible. I wept. I cursed. I packed my bag not once, but thrice, thinking those bullies will never catch me, and, if they do, they will never make me stay, Graham is right. But I unpacked each time I remembered that while they might have a hard time making me do anything, it really wasn’t me they were interested in. The possibility existed that I could end up giving birth without Graham. Then, in some sickening application of law, I’d be charged with some criminal act related to protecting Graham or withholding information of his whereabouts – and held – as a lure to bring my husband back for punishment.

  After twenty-four hours of wavering, I called Adele and told her to go ahead with the funeral. I would send flowers.

  And then I swore I would never again, under any circumstances, set foot in the country of my birth.

  Labour was fast, as though little Surinder was a tadpole who’d just lost her gills and tail and discovered the sweet taste of oxygen. I cried when she was born, the wrenching inside like a part of me was being torn away, the simultaneous yet not at all contradictory sense that I was at the centre of a miracle. The tears were also a release. Like a lopsided tower of child’s blocks, the world I knew had collapsed. I clasped in my arms both the red, wrinkly body of my child, and the fragile power of my own singularity. Ready or not, now I was a parent. A parent without parents. An orphaned nomad lost in a swirling universe.

  Adele asked me what I wanted to do about Da
d’s house. Rife with memories, the only place where I had hope of connecting with either of my parents, where perhaps my loneliness could be abated, it was now an exoplanet. Cold. Oxygen-deprived. Unreachable.

  “Sell,” I said. I did not cry.

  Of course, the sale of the house also meant Graham and I came into a little money. At the end of the fall, when Surinder was six months old and the Christmas decorations were beginning to appear on the streets downtown, we packed up and left Toronto the Good, as it was known in those days, for the west coast.

  *

  Ed Malone gives me thick leather gloves and a worn pair of boots which require me to wear two knoppled pairs of wool socks. I will buy better fitting boots once I get my first pay cheque.

  My first pay cheque. Money in my hands every two weeks. Independent of forgotten cheques, parents’ overdrawn accounts, students’ colds and flus, last minute cancellations. No more explaining to a sniffing loans officer at the bank how irregular my income can be. No more need to produce six years’ worth of tax returns to prove how it usually evens out – and still see skepticism flash across her face. When giddiness leaves, I luxuriate in the idea of finally being flush.

  Ed says we will clear the building rubbish while we wait for delivery of the trusses, sheathing, tar paper and shingles. To help, he hires Andy, an all-round handyman who lives near the pub at Fulford. “This is Robin,” Ed gestures from beside the lightning-scarred tree stump. “And this is her house.”

  “ ‘lo,” says Andy. He looks down and scrapes his toe in the grass, so I’m not certain whether he’s addressing me or my house. His leather boots are soft with creases. He wears a once-black Metallica t-shirt and equally faded khaki pants. His mouth opens and closes like someone who is not used to speaking much, a trait I already appreciate.

  “Let’s roll,” Ed says.

  Ed and Andy begin on what’s left of the roof. They loosen, then fold back a corner of the tarp. Wielding sledgehammers, they attack the section which remains aloft. Less than a dozen hits, and it crashes down with an earth-shaking thud. In the silence that follows, dust rises.

  “Clean break,” Ed says.

  Tarp reattached, we enter my house together. Time to sweat. We lift sheets of half-rotten plywood, heavy with layers of shingles. We break apart splintered lumber that once supported the roof. It cracks, dry bones in our hands, on our knees, under our feet. We haul out ceramic shards of sink, bath, toilet. Then we tear at the sub-floor. Though nearly unrecognizable, I can remember the location of each of the soft spots I used to avoid. Nails bend and screech. When the big stuff is outside, we shovel. The scrape on the concrete slab is as rhythmic as a cat’s purr.

  My thoughts wander back to Luna. Why hasn’t she contacted her parents? She should have. She could have explained exactly what happened and made them understand that all I did was help. Beth should have intervened as well. As a person with a foot in both worlds, she has an unbiased opinion – at least, she would if she spent any time thinking about the whole story. If only someone would step in and make things right, I would go back there tomorrow with their box. I would have to rob a bank, but I would do it. Just so long as everything was as before.

  I feel terrible about Shafiq’s suicide. One part of me can’t even believe he did it – he was so slow and feeble. He used to take hours to do even the smallest task. Even something as minor as setting the table would require an hour or two. How did he muster the strength to tie a noose and climb a tree? He never should have done it. There was absolutely no need for him to have gone so far.

  Fee arrives with coffee and cookies, and watches for twenty minutes. Before she leaves she says, “Purge away, boys and girl. Does wonders for the constitution.”

  After she leaves, I tackle a stubborn piece of wood in a corner beneath the place where we’ve just collapsed the roof. It’s a very secure section of the floor – two layers of tiles under vinyl all firmly fixed to plywood. I try to wiggle it, bend it, pry it off the sub-floor, but it won’t move. Ed hands me a crowbar. I ram the tip underneath, and lean into it. Something gives. I reposition my hands and push again. The nails release with a slow creak and finally, a pop.

  Satisfied, I hold the crowbar in two hands.

  “Hey,” I say. “This is really nice.”

  Heavy and tough, yet smooth and well-balanced. It rests in my palms. It’s a familiar feeling, and yet nothing has ever fit quite so well in the palm of my hand.

  Nothing.

  At least not since –

  I run across the room. To where I last held it. I look. There is nothing to turn over. There is nothing there but concrete slab.

  “Robin? What’s wrong?” Ed says.

  I run outside. The dumpster almost overflows. But is this the first load? The second? I can’t remember. I haven’t paid attention. Damn, I haven’t paid attention. A piece of lumber juts out at an unnatural angle. I grab it. A nail punctures my glove and hand. I don’t care. I pull with all my weight. Nothing moves. I roar as if to amass strength. I will empty this entire dumpster if I have to. The wood moans and cracks. But nothing happens. I can’t dislodge it. I pull harder. My feet leave the ground. I swing by my arms, kick the dumpster. Boom. I swing away, then back and kick again. Boom. And again. Boom.

  “Lord, Robin, what is it?” Ed pulls my arm. Grip lost, I crash to the ground. I look at my hand. Blood, dark and thick, seeps through my gloves. A deep gash spans the distance from the base of my thumb almost to my wrist.

  “What are you doing? Andy, get the kit.” Ed falls to his knees and takes my bleeding hand. “Look what you’ve done to yourself.”

  He presses on the wound. It should hurt. But chemical relief has kicked in and I don’t feel a thing. Except despair. I have to find that watch.

  “Let go.” I struggle but he holds me down.

  “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “I’ve lost something – a watch. Have you seen it? I had it last week. It was there on the floor.” I point, as though there might be a clue, a lingering shadow of its shape. “I have to find it.”

  Ed stills. “I’m sorry. It must be gone.”

  “What do you mean gone? I need to find it.” Andy’s back with the first aid kit. He lays it before Ed like an offering. I twist. I have to get back to the dumpster. “Let go of me.” But Ed holds fast. The gnarly fingers of his other hand root through the box at the same time.

  “Can you see the peroxide?” Ed sifts through paper-wrapped bandages and plastic bottles. Andy’s hands plunge in there, too. He finds and holds out the peroxide.

  “We have to empty the dumpster.” Ed and Andy look up at the heap beside us. “I’ll go through it myself if I have to.”

  Andy opens the bottle. Ed shakes his head, and removes my glove. “She doesn’t realize that’s the third load,” he says over his shoulder. The gash is jagged and deep at one end. It screams septic. Andy grimaces.

  “Who cleared out that corner? Was it you?” I ask Andy. “Did you see it?” He shrugs. “What’s that supposed to mean – yes or no? Did you see it or not?” I know I make no sense, but his puzzled face, his careless shrug, his reticence drive me wild. “You threw it out, didn’t you?”

  “It could have been any of us,” Ed says. “In fact, it might’ve been you.”

  I collapse. I give in. My tears flow alongside my blood. Graham’s watch is gone. Worse still, I might be responsible.

  Ed takes me to the clinic in Ganges while Andy stays, ostensibly to look for the watch. But I can tell they are trying to appease me, so I will go to the clinic without a fight. They think the watch is history.

  Ed and I are asked to sit and wait in metal chairs with unnaturally angled backs and seats too high for my feet to reach the floor. These are the type of chairs offered by people who don’t want you to get comfortable. The other people waiting read magazines and drink coffee from paper cups. One man snor
es. Ed waits a respectful few minutes, then lowers his head close to mine. “So what’s the big deal about the watch?”

  “It was my husband’s. He passed away eleven years ago this summer.”

  “Family heirloom?”

  “Not really. I was just sort of attached to it, I guess.” And so was my daughter – but painful throbbing in my hand pushes the memory aside. I wince and swallow a moan.

  “Give me your hand for a sec.” Ed massages tiny circles around the knuckle of my baby finger until suddenly, the ache fades.

  “Hey, what are you doing?”

  “There we go.” He stops moving his fingers and presses down, firm and steady. “Acupressure.”

  The throbbing disappears entirely. I’m relieved – and incredulous. “Where’d you learn that?”

  “Detox,” he says casually. “The second time.” He drops my hand.

  I look around the waiting room, expecting everyone to have fallen off the disagreeable chairs. But no one even glances our way.

  “There are dozens of pressure points on the hands and feet that can relieve all kinds of pain – physical and psychological. I just took an educated guess about this one. Worked, eh?”

  “Oh.” I force a smile. Sit up. Blink quickly. Ed speaks of being treated for alcoholism like it is a common cold. Like an idiot, I ask, “So – how was it?”

  Ed laughs. “Awful. Words alone cannot describe it. It’s the only thing that keeps me from drinking again.” He slouches back in his chair, still smiling, and shrugs. “Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.”

  “But aren’t you cured now?”

  He leans in. “Not a day goes by when I don’t crave a rum and coke. Hold the coke.”

  I’m aghast. “How long has it been?”

  “Nine years on September 4. Seven fifteen in the morning.”

  The exactness of his knowledge touches me. I have the same precise recall of Graham’s death. We fall into awkward silence. He probably regrets having said so much. The quiet becomes overwhelming when, at exactly the same time, everyone stops turning pages and coughing. Even the snorer stops.