The nuns who ran St. Michael’s Hospital and who first hired my father told my mother how impressed they had been with his valiant attempts at English and his determined work ethic, not to mention his blue eyes and long lashes. “Too gorgeous,” they would say to her, “to be placed in the head of a man.” The nuns chose to hire him without any experience. Under Sister Ophelia’s tutelage, my father mopped, scrubbed, and disinfected for only a short while before he was proclaimed supervisor of the hospital’s housekeeping department. It was a meteoric rise, or so my mother would proudly say. He had an office. It was located in the basement.
“Remember, I is a supervisor,” he’d announce, puffed chest and all. It was made clear to us that if ever asked we were never to reveal what exactly he was a supervisor of. It was a family secret, just like all the employee evaluations he could never fill out for himself. Misplaced glasses or a terrible headache would always lead him in our direction. My sister would roll her eyes as she typed up the forms. My father pretended not to notice. My mother would take us aside and again remind us, “What happens in this house, stays in this house.”
I was struggling with her shaky rule about keeping things within the confines of our home when I caught my Aunt Louisa smuggling piecework—stacks of pockets to be sewn on the backs of jeans—upstairs, into my mother’s workroom. My mother shushed me. “I’m helping your tia,” she said. “We need the extra bit of money.” I proudly skipped downstairs and whispered what my mother was doing into my father’s ear. His feet hammered up the stairs. He reappeared at the top of the stairwell trailed by my mother, who tugged at his shirt with one hand and with the other hand tried to grab the jumble of jeans he carried in his arms. My mother flung the jeans she had managed to tear from his grasp over her shoulder and bent to pick up the pants that had fallen.
He went outside, red-faced and barefoot in the snow, and threw the jeans into a heap, kicked at them to pile them higher. He disappeared into the garage and, when he returned, squirted barbecue starter fluid all over the mound. My mother tried to drag what she could away before he lit a match and flicked it on the pile. She shielded her face from the ball of instant blue then orange flame. In front of the blazing pyre she stood, panting with strands of hair lodged in the corners of her mouth. My father stood behind the flames, his torso and face awash with a warm glow. My mother turned. She zipped her housecoat up and down so fast her fist blurred. She stopped, caught me looking through the screen door. She allowed her eyelids to shut, then tilted her chin to the sky.
My mother and what seemed like most of my family worked at St. Michael’s Hospital, amid the glass buildings in the center of the city. Every time I entered the building I would go directly to the statue of Michael the Archangel and sit under his large stone wings. The nuns who ran the hospital had told my father they had purchased the marble statue for forty-eight dollars and that it was carved out of the same marble as the Pietà. “That statue is in the Vatican,” my father would say. The statue of Michael stood in the hospital’s Bond Street entrance—“the urban angel,” that’s what they called the hospital. I liked to think people called it that because of the statue that looked down on everyone who was rushed through the corridors strapped to their blood-soaked gurneys. Almost every drug overdose, stabbing, shooting, or attempted suicide was brought there first. I liked to think it was Michael that decided who was worthy of getting fixed—who deserved a second chance.
I was almost ten when I first spoke to the archangel. With hands pressed together, palm to palm, I began with three Our Fathers and five Hail Marys.
“Angel Michael, can you hear me?” I asked with my lips slightly parted, just like a ventriloquist. There were people walking through the halls and I didn’t want anyone to hear. “Can you just pretend I’m on my knees? I know that I’m not always the best kid, the best son, but I want to be good.” I looked over my shoulder. “This summer I’m going to stop stealing: chocolate bars and gum from Senhora Rosa’s variety store, and bikes; I’ll tell Manny I don’t want to help him steal bikes anymore. It’s not worth the five bucks Senhor Alfredo’s son gives us. I promise to keep secrets—those that can hurt people, at least. I’ve been trying really hard because my mother says that’s the only way I can be an angel of God—like you. Oh! And the wings”—I had almost forgotten—“for the festa; I’ve been praying for so long now, please, please, help me get chosen. I promise to be good … as good as I can be. In the name of the Father and …”
I got off the elevator and turned the corner before opening my father’s door. There was a small waiting room and I sat in one of the mismatched chairs. I could hear noises coming from inside his office. I tried to push open the door, even kicked it once.
“Pai, it’s me. Are you in there?”
I was leaning against the door when it sprang open. I fell in. Sister Ophelia, who had given my father the job at the hospital, looked at me with squinted eyes that narrowed her nose like a pencil. I had always liked Sister Ophelia. Every Christmas my father would bring home a picture of him and the nuns gathered around the hospital’s fake Christmas tree. While all the other nuns looked stiff in their pressed cotton shirts, their long skirts and rubber-soled shoes, Sister Ophelia looked fresh, as if she had run across a field of wildflowers in slow motion like in that commercial for some kind of feminine product my sister could never really explain to me. Sister Ophelia wore pumps, and the hem of her skirt sat just above her knees. But most scandalous of all was the faint outline of a bra you could clearly see beneath her creamy chiffon blouse. She always stood next to my father in these pictures, and I couldn’t help but notice she was taller than him.
My father’s face was flushed as Sister Ophelia searched for her glasses on his desk. The white buttons on her blouse didn’t match up and the gaping pucker went unnoticed by her. She placed the glasses on the sharp ridge of her nose and moved toward me with a firm step. Her heels clickety-clacked on the linoleum. I was about to say hello but stopped when she looked down at me with her laser eyes. I curled into a ball as she stepped over me. She twisted her hair into a bun before making a sharp turn at the door.
My father sat under a large photograph of a swooshing train that blurred into the distance: CANADIAN PACIFIC.
“Never! Never come and disturb my work.”
“But Pai, I was …”
My father raised his hand. “Where did I tell you to meet? Huh, where?”
The top of his bald head shone like a mirror; I could see the reflection of the fluorescent bulbs that hung in his office, two neat rows.
“Get out! Get out of here! Leave! Go see you … mother.”
I ran out of his office and up the stairs. I ran down the corridor, funneled through the sickening dark halls and past the statue before punching my way through the doors and jumping six stairs to the sidewalk on Bond Street. I sucked in the cold air and breathed in my secret. I didn’t take the streetcar home, just ran across Queen Street, past the neon lights of Yonge Street, University Avenue and the fountains, Spadina and all the boarded-up storefronts, then Bathurst and turned up Palmerston Avenue. I made it all the way home without stepping on any cracks.
The winter was slipping away and the yellow grass was beginning to show blotches of green. My father was in a terrible mood. He was home most days but he hardly spoke to anyone and looked away when I came into the room. He avoided the front door, chose to enter through the garage and then down into the house through the basement. I could see that it concerned my mother. He had stopped going to work and people were asking questions. Every time she tried to talk to him about it, he would mumble something then leave to tend to his pigeons or piddle around with his gardening hoe in the still-frozen soil. My sister would look to my mother for an answer. “Leave your father alone for a while.” I said nothing, betrayed no one.
At the end of March, my father came home with a terrific grin on his face. He rounded us all up and directed us to the front stoop. My mother was thrilled to see this change in
him. We shuffled excitedly down the hallway as if it were a game. My father bolted ahead of us as we came out and leaned his back against the shiny red cab of a huge dump truck parked in front of our home. He had his arms crossed, a chamois that knotted like a pretzel in front of his chest peeking through. He smiled as he moved away from the door and with the side of his open hand sawed back and forth under large gold letters set in an arch: MANUEL AND SONS HAULAGE CO. Our phone number was printed underneath.
“What did you do, Manuel?”
My father looked up and down the street before kicking a tire hard.
My mother asked in a whisper, “How much did this cost?”
He spun around. “It’s always about the money. If you’re going to make it in this country you don’t ask how much things cost.” He spiked the chamois onto the sidewalk.
My mother looked up and down the street, scouring for neighbors.
“Did my cousin ask how much things cost when his bakery business took off?”
This was going to be my father’s next attempt at “making it,” a dump truck operation. Before that there had been the goat cheese business he had bought into with his cousin, until they couldn’t get a goat’s milk supplier and he was forced to bail out of the venture. He tried to make pigeon breeding a career but didn’t understand it was a hobby based on bartering and trading—not on making money. He sold sets of non-stick pots and pans door to door, then vacuum cleaners, until he settled on sheet sets and sateen bedspreads sold from his car. His latest venture had ended last week. He’d had a home cleaning business on the side—local banks at night, which evolved into cleaning homes in Rosedale and Forest Hill. That was going well until the police came to our house during March break looking for certain detergents and cleaning items that had been clearly stamped ST. MICHAEL’S HOSPITAL. I was the only one at home with my father when they searched the basement and the trunk of his car and confiscated everything. I never said anything to anyone.
“Manuel, you left your job last week. You won’t talk to me and I don’t have the answers. Everyone at work has been asking where you are and now … Sister Ophelia says you were … let go. Why, Manuel? Answer me, what happened at work?” Her lips fluttered as if little sparrows were flying out of her mouth. I looked over. My sister didn’t seem to react.
“You hold me back!” He pointed his finger at my mother but looked straight at me. A string of spit clung to his chin. “It’s because of you that I’ve gone nowhere!”
My sister put her arm around my mother’s waist as her limp figure slipped back into the house. My father’s arm, the same one that shook as he pointed at her, dropped and slapped his side.
I stood alone on the veranda.
“Filho, climb in.” These were the first words he had spoken to me in over a week. “I did this for us, filho. For you.”
I turned and went inside the house.
I hated Saturday mornings, especially when the weather was beginning to get so nice. While other kids played on the street or in the laneways shared by Palmerston Avenue and Markham Street, I had to put on my dress clothes, a large felt cross pinned to my chest. My mother had signed me up for catechism that spring. She thought I’d stay out of trouble, away from my hoodlum friends—and who knew, maybe I’d even learn the Beatitudes.
“You look nice—a proper Soldier of God.” My mother smiled.
My father sat at the kitchen table, cracking walnuts between his fingers, two at a time.
“Manuel, look at your son. Isn’t he handsome?” My mother said. The words they shared had been few since my father bought the truck and lost his job at the hospital. My mother had attempted to smooth things over, punctuating the days with inoffensive comments or supportive observations. My father still couldn’t look at me for very long.
“He’s a good boy. He doesn’t need to look like the navio that Columbus sailed, with that cross pinned to his chest.”
“Manuel, don’t …”
“Don’t you …” He slammed his fist hard. The walnuts rolled, then tumbled onto the kitchen floor. Their bumpy shells sounded like rattlesnakes as they spread across the linoleum. He regained his composure, quietly got up and walked to the back door. He turned to my mother. She didn’t look up at him, just bent down and gathered the walnuts into her apron. I got on my knees and helped.
“I don’t want my children kissing the Pope’s ass!” Then, after a slight pause, he continued. “He’s Canadian. Leave Portuguese things back home for the old to die with.” The room was quiet. “I don’t want him bowing at the dirty feet of a priest.”
My father had always resented the priests at our parish—all priests, in fact—and for the most part stayed away from Sunday mass. My mother never seemed to mind; he had his reasons, as far as she was concerned, and she used the peaceful hour at mass every week to collect her thoughts.
I ran all the way, slipping every so often in my new shoes, until I found myself on the front steps of St. Mary’s Church, Portugal Square.
I entered into the darkness of the church. It always smelled like Lemon Pledge. I tried to pat down my cowlick with the holy water before pushing open the heavy green doors. I always liked the hollow sound my shoes made walking up the aisle, the way every step or lowering of the kneeler reverberated throughout the old church. Heads turned as I walked up the aisle toward Sister Pedrosa, who met me with her almond eyes and flaring nostrils. We used to aim peashooters at her nose. Mulched pieces of paper towel were chewed then molded into tiny pellets before our tongues stuffed them wet and hard into straws. A quick burst of air sent the projectile close to, if not up, the cavernous walls of Sister’s nose as she stood in front of the altar. Manny actually hit it once, just as the sister tilted her head back in praise of God. Tears welled in her eyes before she ran out of the church. I think people felt bad. I didn’t care.
“Antonio.” Her upper and lower jaws moved in opposite directions as if she was chewing something. “Why are you late?”
“I had diarrhea, Sister. So when I went to the bathroom …” I pulled at the back of my pants for added effect.
Her hand came up, stopped me. Some girls began to laugh.
“Sorry, Sister, I didn’t know diarrhea was a bad word.”
“Just sit!”
Everyone noticed my victory smirk as I sidestepped along the pew toward Ricky and sat down. I flicked his shoulder; he turned and smiled without really looking at me. Things had been like this between us now for a while. A couple of weeks back, as my boots splashed in the puddles that dotted our laneway, I came across Ricky, who crouched near the heating vents at the rear of Senhor Jerome’s Pool Hall.
“Hey, Ricky! What’s up?” I had shouted.
He had fumbled a bit, reluctantly turned to face me. Steam shot from his nose and mouth. He staggered in the mist then took off, just clear took off around the corner and out onto Markham Street.
I was about to follow but a scratching sound, like dog nails on concrete, made me turn toward the fence. I saw nothing but a hole the size of a pickle jar lid cut into the fence that I knew shaded the outdoor patio where the men drank and played cards. I saw a flash of blue paper being dropped, an eyeball darting from side to side. I moved closer, squatted to pick up the five-dollar bill folded lengthwise in a V. Then a penis poked its way through the hole—its purple head bobbed on a shaft held by nicotine-stained fingers. I scrambled to my feet and ran, all the way down the lane and into my garage. I closed my eyes to collect my thoughts. I could hear my heart pounding.
Ricky hadn’t been at school for a while; he was often absent. But a week later he came over to speak to me.
“Sorry I ran from you last week,” he said.
“Did I scare you?”
“Nah, it’s just … well, I was … what did you want anyways?”
“Nothing. I tried to follow you but you were too fast for me.” I smiled. I liked the feeling of hoarding secrets.
Ricky ran his fingers through his curly hair; half moons of dirt l
ay under his fingernails. Manny had told me Ricky’s dad was out of work. I never believed it; Ricky’s pockets always seemed too full. Five-dollar bills, all rolled or crumpled into tight balls, would spill out of his pocket whenever he’d treat us all to Surprise Bags, Black Cat gum, or Lola’s. We weren’t allowed to hang around at his house. “My father works at night and he gets terrible migraines. I’m not allowed to have friends over.” Ricky intrigued me; it was as if he lived alone without anyone to care for him. But he seemed happy.
“As I was saying, children, the Festa do Senhor Santo Cristo is almost here, the most important feast of the year. I’ve made my decisions. After I call out your names please make sure that you pick up your costumes from the rectory before going home today.” We all wanted to be the Angel Michael in the procession. We all wanted those massive wings. The wired halo, sparkling with crystals that jiggled in the sunlight, was a small price to pay for the sword the Angel brandished. This was to be my year. I had prayed to the Angel Michael for months. I had kept my secrets and prayed for my father, and for Ricky too. Angel Michael had heard me, he had seen the change and I was sure to be rewarded.
“Ahem.” Sister cleared her throat to announce this was it. “This year, Angel Michael will be played by …”—she scanned the room for teasing effect and her eyes landed on me—“Ricardo Mendonca.” Sister Pedrosa looked pleased with herself. In the midst of all the congratulatory noise and my stunned silence, I managed to wriggle my hand out from my lint-filled pocket. I patted Ricky on his shoulder. He seemed shocked by the decision. A crowd huddled around him but I managed to loosen myself from the knot—to move away from everyone’s praise, Sister Pedrosa’s smugness and evil nostrils. I made my way to the large wooden doors. The faint wisps of incense seared the back of my throat. I sat outside on the church’s stone steps and sucked in a blast of cool spring air.
I walked home with my paltry wings fit only for a worthless, nameless angel, feathers flattened and worn. I had turned back a couple of times and caught a glimpse of Ricky. The fluffy white feathers of his wings flittered with the slightest breeze, and the sword tucked in his belt flashed in the sunlight. I tried to walk faster. The thought of trailing behind Ricky under the shade of his wings for the entire parade made me crazy. Sister Pedrosa had made a mistake. She didn’t know what kind of boy Ricky really was.
Barnacle Love Page 10
