What We All Long For

by Dionne Brand

  “Practising? Bunch of fucking Nazis imitating that Guns N’ Roses shit!” Oku was beside himself. “Can’t she see?”

  “Chill out, man.” Kumaran laughed, trying to laugh Oku out of it.

  Oku turned to him, slightly embarrassed. He’d forgotten the graffiti crew in the room. “Yeah, what you guys do lately?”

  “The subway, end of the line at Sheppard. You can see the pig there when the train slows.” Kumaran licked his fingers. “And see that bank at the corner of Dundas and Spadina? Right at the top? We did that.”

  “You guys are nuts, man. How’d you get up there?”

  “We hold each other by the legs.”

  “Out of your mind, man, y’all are out, frigging crazy!”

  “It’s art, man. You should come with us one night. Tuyen does.”

  “Now you got to be out of your mind. I’m staying on the ground. On the ground, man. None of that high-wire shit for me.”

  The crew laughed, getting up as if by signal. Kumaran’s graffiti crew prided itself on fluency, stealth, and agility. They had made themselves shadowy and present in the city, as in the room. If anyone had looked into the apartment, they would have seen Tuyen, Oku, and Carla right away, and only after searching for something sensed but not seen would they have grasped the leaning, slouching, posed outlines of Kumaran, Keeran, Abel, and Jericho. They were critical presences, unnoticed until they felt like being noticed. They saw their work—writing tags and signatures—as painting radical images against the dying poetics of the anglicized city. The graffiti crew had filled in the details of the city’s outlines. You could see them at night, very late, when the streets seemed wet with darkness, agile and elegant in their movements. The spiritual presences of Tuyen, Oku, and Carla’s generation. Their legs straddling walls and bridge girders and subway caverns, spray-painting their emblems of duality, their dangerous dreams.

  “Check you guys later,” one of them said.

  Tuyen jumped up, following them to the door, promising to go out with them again soon.

  Oku turned to Carla, “So, Yardie, what’s the dillio on Jamal?”

  “You got ten thousand dollars or a house I can borrow?” She heard a betraying resentment in her voice. “No, I’m serious—that’s what I need to get him out.”

  “Why do you have to do it? Why can’t your father?”

  “Pleeease. He washed his hands a long time ago.”

  “Isn’t Jamal still a juvenile, Carla? Isn’t your father obliged?”

  “Obliged?” She laughed this time. “He’s not obliged to do shit. Jamal is eighteen. He’s not a juvie any more.”

  “That’s some dope shit.” It was inconceivable to Oku. His own father would never let him out of his sight. He thought of this with fear and relief.

  “You know, Carla, maybe this time he’s just got to figure it out himself.”

  “You don’t understand. You have people, Tuyen, right? You, both of you, always had people.”

  “He had people too, Carla.”

  “Not like you. Anyway, he’s my brother. I’ll deal with it.”

  “Carla”—Tuyen’s voice was soft—“we’re not saying … you know, like, abandon him, but he always does this and then you’re the one who has to … you know, clean it up, fix it.”

  “Yes, the point is, you always rescue him, see. He expects it. So we’re saying you can’t keep up. He never takes care of you! He’s not a baby! So maybe just let him handle this for himself, like a man, this time.”

  “Would you want that for your brother, Tuyen? You don’t have anybody, Oku, so you don’t know. If you did, you think you’d just let them stay in jail?”

  “I don’t know. You’re right, okay, but what I’m saying is why doesn’t he ever think of you? Where you going to find ten thousand dollars? That’s just whack!” Oku was incredulous.

  “Well, I’m probably back to where I don’t want to be, I guess. Gotta go see Derek. I was on my way there this morning, but …”

  “Your father?”

  “Yes, the fucking asshole.”

  “Well, he should take it on, Carla. Why should you have to alone?”

  “Okay, okay, done already. I don’t want to talk about it any more.”

  Carla started briskly packing up dishes again. Tuyen made no move to help. She poured another rum from Oku’s stolen bottle.

  “What the hell is this made of, Oku?”

  “Good stuff.” Oku smiled at her, wandering over to the stereo.

  “Hey, Carla, take one, let’s just chill out. Kick back.” Tuyen rose. Going toward Carla at the sink and holding Carla’s head back, she poured a shot into Carla’s mouth. Carla gasped from the bracing fumes, bent over. Laughing now.

  “Hey, Carla, where’s my Dizzy?”

  “Doesn’t look like she’s coming, Oku.” And they laughed together drunkenly.

  Quy

  Time. All of them have time. I had waiting. They have their friends and this city. I had shit. I guess you’d say I should have made better of myself. I didn’t have anybody sacrifice a whole life for me. Every one of them had that. A city like this is built on that. I can feel it all around.

  After a year and a half at Pulau Bidong I learned a little English. My first step to humanity. My father had hung around the assholes of enough Americans to know the value of English. He came home with words like “cool” and “Charlie.” At Bidong I buzzed around the UNCHR people, hoping one of them would find me interesting or cute and take me with them. I almost did it. There was one lady who looked at me fondly, and whenever she came, I made it my business to be less hungry-looking and more charming. It’s hard to look cute after a year and a half of loneliness. I offered her little objects I made with twine and sticks and bottle caps. I collected plastic debris and gave it to her. And after all that, the bitch didn’t take me. She was French. My father spoke French. The UNCHR people kept looking at us and asking us how we were treated. Us, the children parents had abandoned or lost. We punched each other out for their attention. All they did was count us and write reports.

  When I first saw Pulau Bidong, I’ve got to say it was beautiful. The boat I was in was called the Dong Khoi. We had drifted for the last ninety-six hours without water or food. Mercifully, although I don’t believe in mercy, we looked up one dawn to see Bidong. The water between the Dong Khoi and the island was blue-black. The air was cold, even though it was hot. The water—did I say?—was a wonderful misty blue-black, and there out of the mist rose Pulau Bidong. Green and greener where the sun hadn’t touched it yet. If I got to that island, I thought, I would stomp all over it. But this is the future and I’m recasting. I didn’t feel that. I thought instead that my mother and father, my sisters, would be there waiting for me. I thought all boats went to Bidong. The sight of the island lifted my hopes. I’ve never been able to get rid of the feeling I had at the sight of Bidong in the dawn. The sky was a blue-grey mist too, yet all three hues of sea and sky and land, I could see clearly through to the waking sun. It may have been about four or five in the morning. There was a silence. Sometimes I wish that I had stayed right there in that picture in that dawn. I see me leaning off the Dong Khoi with the beautiful island in front of me and that feeling of expectation. Right then, nothing is wrong. Nothing.

  I could’ve had a different life if that moment—ah, sure. My father and mother had already dragged me from a certain trajectory. Truly, the war had already dragged us up and ripped up our planned course. People like me don’t have control of life. Anonymity is a useful thing. In some places they think people like me are preparing to bomb buildings and murder children. My mother and father and my sisters went off to join them, and I suppose I would’ve gone right along with them and never had these thoughts if I hadn’t followed those legs onto the Dong Khoi. Perhaps I would’ve had these thoughts anyway. Perhaps they’re having these thoughts but have stuffed them so far down their own gullets they’re inexpressible.

  I’m grateful in the end for the Dong Kh
oi and Pulau Bidong if I’m grateful for anything. But gratitude is not one of the outcomes of this story or my life. My brother got my father and mother at the thick point of their guilt. They don’t see him, they see me. They imagine me in the dense mist in the South China Sea, me on Bidong. They pour all their senses into him, paying and paying out till he’s sick with indulgence. I’ve got no pity. You think I would look at his face and not see the years he’s been fattened instead of me? Brotherliness is another feeling I can’t come up with. Self-interest is what moves the world. People bunch together because they’re scared. I’m a loner. Don’t expect me to tell you about the innocence of youth, that would be another story, not mine.

  What happened to the master who made the servant swear never to tell his stories to anyone else? Did I tell you that story? The monk who came to Pulau Bidong once told it to me. I’ll tell it to you in case you think I don’t have a sense of humour.

  Once there was a servant who had a young boy for a master. Every night the servant would tell this boy fantastic stories, and the stories were so good the boy didn’t want anyone else to have them, so, the son of a bitch that he was already, he told the servant never to tell anyone else these stories just so he could have them to himself. He made the servant swear never to tell the stories outside his room, and the servant, ass-licking servant that he was, vowed never to do so. The boy grew up and was to be married. He dressed up in his finest clothes and went out of the house to his carriage to leave for his wedding. The servant happened to be passing by the boy’s room when he heard voices from inside. Who could be in his master’s room? he thought, and he leaned his head against the door to listen.

  One voice said, “We have to do something about this damned boy today!”

  Another voice said, “Yeah, that cac is going off to get married and we’ll be locked up in this room forever.”

  “Okay,” said a third voice, “here’s the plan. I’m a story about a poisoned well. When he gets into his carriage and they’re halfway to the wedding, he’ll get thirsty and I’ll appear and he’ll drink from the well and that’ll be the end of the selfish lo dit.”

  “Great idea,” said the first voice. “But just in case he doesn’t drink from the well, I’m a story about flaming hot coals. When he reaches his bride’s house, they’ll run out with a footstool. I’ll lay under the cushion and burn him to death.”

  “Yeah,” said another voice. “Fantastic. I’m a story about a deadly venomous snake. Let’s say he doesn’t drink from the well, let’s say he doesn’t put his foot on the stool. I’ll lay in his honeymoon bed next to his sweetheart’s face like a beautiful embroidery. When he lays down, I’ll kill the du-ma-may! And we’ll all be free from this room.”

  “Yeah,” they all agreed.

  Just then the frightened servant, who didn’t know a good thing when he heard it, burst into the room, but there was no one there.

  When the master went out in his carriage to his wedding, the servant begged to go with him. On the way the young master said, “Oh, I’m so thirsty, servant, get me some water from that well.”

  The servant, risking a blow to the head, said, “Oh no, master, you’ll be late for the bride. They’ve prepared better than water there for you.”

  The master said, “Okay, you’re right.”

  When they got to the bride’s house, the footmen brought out the footstool for the young master’s feet. The old servant grabbed it quickly, burning his own hands, saying, “Oh, master, the coals are too hot, these idiot footmen. Climb on my back and I’ll take you inside.” The master was astonished but went on his back.

  After the wedding, when the bride and groom had retired to the bedroom and the bride was all naked in the matrimonial bed, the servant snuck in and stood behind the curtain. Next to the bride’s lovely face was the most exquisite embroidery of a languorous snake. And as the bridegroom was about to lay his head on it, the servant jumped out and grabbed the deadly venomous snake and smashed it to death, apologizing and explaining the conspiracy of the stories he had overheard in the master’s bedroom.

  What makes a guy so slavish? This is a fairy tale, the kind you know. Now who would make up a story like that?

  TWELVE

  AT THE ATM MACHINE in the bank, Tuyen found a photograph. It was lying there as if waiting for her. This always happened to her. She would turn around and find frames filled in with the life of the city. She would find discarded looks, which she tried to trace to their origins, or alternately their flights. On any given day, on any particular corner, on any crossroads, you can find the city’s heterogeneity, like some physical light. And Tuyen found herself always in the middle of observing it.

  She’s taking her last twenty dollars out of the ATM machine, and when she looks down, there’s the photograph lying on the floor. There are two people in the small photograph, a man and woman, against a tropical tree, with a church steeple in the background. The man is wearing light pants, a suit, single-buttoned, with a tie; the woman is wearing a white boat-necked dress. Tuyen turns the photograph over and reads: “Recuerdo de nuestra noche, 1968.” She was torn between taking the picture, that was her first instinct, and leaving it for its owner’s return. Such a photograph, someone would return for. The idea of using it in her installation came to her immediately. A token, a memory of our night, 1968. Whoever they were, they would be in their fifties now, they were in the heat of a love affair then, and they were in love with themselves; they were stylish, young. She wondered what they were like now and which one of them had lost the photograph thirty-four years later. That’s what made Tuyen decide to leave it where she’d found it. In case that woman, or that man, came back in a terrible panic at having lost a moment in 1968. She put the photograph down gently, feeling its afterimage in her hand.

  Reluctantly she appeared at Binh’s store. He looked up as she entered. There was an unusually grateful smile on his face.

  “Don’t be too happy yet …” She stopped, noticing that there were other people in the store. Someone small and cute who must be Binh’s current girlfriend, and two of Binh’s friends—Elliott, who Tuyen had never liked and who had been Binh’s friend since grade nine, and another guy Tuyen didn’t know but didn’t like immediately. She was predisposed not to like anyone around Binh. And they all looked at her warily.

  “Everybody, this is my sister Tuyen,” Binh said, his voice proprietary.

  The two guys got up to leave, the girlfriend stayed seated, trying to make even less of herself. Elliott threw Tuyen an appraising look before going out the door behind the other man. Tuyen noticed the other man bite his fingernails and spit them on the sidewalk, then examine his hand and put it in his pocket. Elliott said something to him, and they parted. The girl made a movement, and Binh introduced her.

  “This is Ashley.”

  “Ashley?” Tuyen asked with an impolite curiosity. “Where’d you get a name like that? What’s your real name?”

  “Hue,” the girl said defensively.

  “Well, nice to meet you, Hue.” She looked at her brother, rolling her eyes.

  He said, “I see you changed your mind about helping me? Or you just snooping?”

  “I figure, how hard could it be?”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “And I could use the money.”

  “Ah,” Binh said, a small triumphant look on his face. “I only need you to help Ashley out.”

  “Ashley? You mean Hue.”

  “Yes, Hue. For Christ’s sake, since when are you so politically correct. She wants to be called Ashley, all right?” He sounded peevish.

  “She does?” Tuyen asked looking over at the girl, who made no comment. “Well, whatever. So Hue’s gonna be here. Fine. So what do you want me to do, then?”

  “Ashley,” he said firmly, “will open up in the mornings. I know you don’t like to get up early. And do you have to wear that tatty old coat?”

  “What are you? Donatella?”

  “Fine, so you can close t
he store at nights?”

  “Why? Trying to hide me from the customers?”

  “Can you do mornings?” Tuyen looked disgusted. “No, I didn’t think so.”

  “Okay, okay. Hue can do mornings, I’ll close up. Every day?”

  Binh was getting frustrated, and Tuyen sensed it. She wanted to be different with him. That was why she had come. That sound of the word “mine” from Carla had kept tugging at her. After all, he was making an attempt to find their brother, or so he said. And though she was suspicious of his motives, it wasn’t a bad thing that he was trying to do. So why couldn’t she summon up a warmth about him? Perhaps they had spent too much of their lives, all of it, sparring with each other. Perhaps Binh wasn’t likable. Perhaps she was unlikable.

  “Look,” he said, pulling her aside, his arm around her shoulders, “I just need you to keep it together here for me while I go. Just check on Ashley … Hue,” he conceded. “She’ll do all the work.”

  Tuyen felt his arm around her shoulder more than she heard what he said. How come he held her with so much familiarity?

  “Fine, fine,” she said, drawing away from Binh. “I’ll help Hue.” She directed a deep smile at the girl, who responded tentatively. “And what about Elliott and that guy?”

  “They got other things to do.”

  “Oh!” She had a fair idea of what “other things” meant. The guy spitting his fingernails into the street looked like a piece of work to her, and Elliott, she’d never liked, not the least because he had tried to show her his penis once when he was sixteen and had sworn her to secrecy, begged her not to tell Binh. Which she hadn’t up to this day. “They’re not gonna do them here, are they?”

  “Jeez, Tuyen, Jesus. Are you here to help or not? No, all right, no.”

  “Don’t get so upset. I’m just asking. Just want to know, that’s all.”

  A silence ensued. She felt petty. She had brought all the hostility into the conversation when, in fact, she had intended to be nice, or at least vaguely agreeable. Instead she had found herself instinctively nasty.