Barnacle Love

by Anthony De Sa

  I lay in bed. The sound of the lock clicking played itself in my head only to be disturbed by the sudden clang of our garage door. Before I heard the familiar sound of his boots, the cadence of his steps climbing the stairs, there was always his smell: pig fat, Craven A cigarettes, and the sweetness of homemade wine. The same smell that would drift from laneways and garages, years later, to find me in my bed.

  As he walked in I saw his face; it was shiny, pinkish-red like the skin underneath a scab. He sat by my bed with his face covered in droplets of sweat. He looked away for one moment and rocked forward as if he’d thought better of it and would leave.

  I inhaled.

  He sat back down again, looking out my open window. He turned to face me, opened his mouth to say something but stopped. I could see his tired eyes. He reached over and carefully brushed my hair from my forehead with his thick fingers. I didn’t want him to cry.

  “You not hurt?” He took another deep breath. He was about to say something else, but instead got up. “Close you light,” he mumbled. Then he quietly shut the door behind him.

  SENHOR CANADA

  JULY 1, 1978

  8:40 A.M. If I pressed my forehead against the mesh screen of my bedroom window, craned my neck and looked down at a certain angle, I could see my father on the veranda with his little straw hat, a Sam Sneed, perched on his head, his red-and-white striped shirt—short-sleeved, of course—and his plaid pants that the kids on the street jokingly called “all seasons,” like the tires. His slippered feet balanced on the wrought-iron railing as he tied the flag to the pole. The tip of the flag swept against the edge of the bathtub, standing upright on one end to form an enameled alcove, the focal point of our garden. Jesus stood inside it, all two feet of him, clutching at his plump Sacred Heart amid the strewn plastic flowers. With the door and windows already open, my father moved to the living room, turned on the large console stereo—the kind that also contained a mirrored miniature bar behind a drop-leaf panel—and placed the single on the turntable. He set the volume to HIGH.

  My mother had secretly stored her figurines safely in her linen drawer the night before, afraid they would scooch slowly along the vibrating furniture and smash onto her parquet floors. My sister had left before my father got up. She had arranged a sleepover with her friend Margaret. My mother would also be leaving; she “needed” to help her sister season the meat for chouriço.

  There was the initial scratch and pop of the needle hitting vinyl because of his already unsteady hand. He appeared on the veranda, just in time.

  O Canada!

  Our home and native land!

  True patriot love in all thy sons command.

  He stood there for the whole song, stiff and serious, his hand crossed over his heart. Then he sat in his folding chair with a Molson Ex in hand. It was quite a sight: the little man, his mismatched attire, wrapped in his adopted patriotism as the anthem blared from our windows and out our door onto Palmerston Avenue. It had become his annual Canada Day ritual—his alone.

  My mother was in her room. “You’ll be okay?” she yelled over the horns and tubas as she wrapped her kerchief around her head. I nodded then looked down at my bare feet; I hadn’t even dressed yet. She lifted my chin gently with her index finger curled like a comma.

  “Are you sure you want to stay? Maybe you want to come with me!” she shouted.

  I reminded her that I was twelve—almost thirteen—and that I could take care of things. I was leaving, I tried to convince her, to go play at Manny’s house. I gently guided her down the hall toward the kitchen and the sliding doors. She hesitated for a moment, looked over my shoulder to see my father leaning over the fence, tapping his feet from one side to the next. The blaring music was becoming too much already. She gnashed her teeth through a strained smile then shuffled her way out the back door, out through the garage. She decided to take the long route through the laneway. It was probably best.

  My mother and sister would both be gone the whole day. I decided to stay upstairs in my room, looking at my digital clock with its orange numbers, willing the day to wilt away. I would arrange my Star Wars cards yet again—Chewbacca at the front of the deck, Princess Leia at the back. I was getting too old for them but in a strange way they comforted me, and I knew they’d be worth something one day. When I got bored I flipped open my sketch pad and drew objects in my room: a chair, the rumpled sheets on my bed. I tried a perspective drawing of my room that got smaller with every failed attempt.

  The 45 was set on REPEAT. The arm of the turntable, with its taped penny for added weight, moved slowly to its rest position; denied its reprieve, it then jerked and swung back over the record and into the fine grooves.

  … With glowing hearts we see thee rise,

  The True North strong and free!

  10:03 A.M. If the couple of years were any indication, he would continue this way for the better part of the day with few interruptions: to get another beer, a glass of wine, or to shed an article of clothing in the growing July heat. At one point that morning I ventured into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of milk.

  “What you do?”

  He caught me off guard. The swinging fridge door nudged my hand, which sent the bottle of milk to the floor. It shattered. The milk spread across the linoleum, pooled around his bare feet.

  “I’ll clean it up … watch your …”

  He walked toward me.

  “Pai, watch it!”

  “You clean up this mess. I no want to live like pigs!”

  I choked as he grabbed me by the collar and tried to lift me off the floor to face him. When he couldn’t, he bent down instead. I didn’t want to look; I didn’t want to see the redness in his round face or smell his morning breath mixed with beer. He had never hit me before and he was proud of telling everyone, especially family, that he had never found a reason to discipline his children like they did “back home”—like dogs, he’d say. I felt his gnarled fingers slowly let go. He patted the back of my T-shirt flat.

  “You is good boy. I no hurt you. I no want you to cut you feet, that’s all.” The lines in the corners of his eyes bunched up like those accordion fans we made with paper.

  I reached down to grab the pieces of broken glass. He left the kitchen with a cold beer and I followed the trail of small red dots that his right foot stamped across the hallway floor.

  11:14 A.M. A canvasing politician arrived just before lunch.

  “Hello, Mr….”—he looked at his clipboard—“Rebelo? You’re a fine Canadian to honor your country this way.”

  “Yes, I Canadian.”

  “Well, the arrogance of this government.” He shook his head for effect. “This prime minister is destroying—”

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Trudeau is destroying the very fabric of—”

  “Out!” my father hollered. He shouted it again, louder, so that he could be heard over the anthem. “Out! Get-out-a-here!” My father strained his neck and gestured a kick, the same way he was taught to kick a football—with the inside of his foot, toes pointing outward.

  “I don’t quite understand—” the politician squirmed.

  “I come from Portugal twenty-three-ago-years.” His thick accent was made thicker by his drunken slur. “I come to Canada with no cash-money—my feet is my shoes! My hands, they hard!” He pounded his chest; I heard the muffled hollowness. “Trudeau is the man. He promise to make things easy for bring my family over here. He keep his promise.”

  The ever-smiling politician slowly made his way out, closing the gate behind him.

  … and stand on guard,

  O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

  My father’s angry voice melded with the anthem, became one as the words spread across our tiny manicured lawn to chase down the retreating politician and his assistant.

  12:10 P.M. Mr. Grayson said that if I am serious about becoming an artist I should sketch everything, even the most mundane things. I could sit behind the aquarium in my roo
m for hours, drawing it. It was filled with guppies, the fancy-tailed variety: Leopard and Sunburst. A boxed kaleidoscope. The fake background bought at the pet store by the foot had been precisely measured and taped to the back of the aquarium, an underwater forest of greens and swirling browns. My father bought a bag of red gravel and a bag of white. I remember when he rinsed it and mixed the colors together.

  “Like Canada flag,” he said.

  “I wanted natural,” I mumbled.

  He hadn’t heard me. My father had also purchased a plastic figure to place at the bottom of the aquarium. It was an old-fashioned deep-sea diver with one of those metal globe helmets. He would try to open the treasure chest filled to the brim with pearls and jewels, but every ten seconds or so a few bubbles would erupt from his golden mask and wobble to the surface along with the diver, who would then be jolted by the hose that connected his helmet to the base. The lid of the treasure chest would close again, covering the elusive riches inside. The diver would then sink back down. He kept trying to pry it open, always with the same result. I don’t know why I found this so fascinating. What was it that kept me glued to his failed attempts?

  … O Canada, glorious and free!

  We stand on guard for thee.

  1:43 P.M. It was getting harder for him to stand for the anthem. He struggled with the arms of his chair and the wrought-iron railing before settling back. He hadn’t eaten a thing. He was wearing only his hat and stained boxer shorts. I was embarrassed by his farmer’s tan; his white feet and pasty torso were clearly lined where his socks and sleeves ended. I sat, trapped like a caged bird, hoping he would come inside and fall asleep so I could turn off the music and get outside. I’d hop on my bike and ride past Robinson and onto Bathurst Street, farther and farther toward the island airport and away from my house.

  “Pai, come inside,” I pleaded through the screen door. “Pai!”—a little louder this time—“I’ll make you lunch. Come inside.”

  He turned and looked at me, his head bobbing.

  “I coming,” he slurred, his eyelids weighted.

  He didn’t move. I opened the screen door and helped him get up. I saw my friend Agnes’s mother, Senhora Gloria, dressed in her customary brown habit, open Mr. Pinto’s gate across the street. She looked right at us as she closed it behind her, smiled and raised her hand halfway. I looked away just as my father reached for my hand and stumbled over the threshold. I quickly shut the door and turned the lock.

  He took three bites of his tuna sandwich in front of the TV before he was out cold. In the kitchen, I collected all the empties and placed them back in the box. I washed the patch of floor still sticky from this morning. When I was certain he was asleep, I turned off the TV and went into the living room to lower the stereo, aware that turning it off completely might rouse him.

  Back in my room I could see Senhora Gloria making her rounds across the street, knocking on doors and asking for more money for the church. She would move up Palmerston all the way to College Street and then work her way back on the other side of the road, our side. I was in love with her daughter Agnes, who said her mother wasn’t a nun but when she got dressed to do the work of the Lord she would always begin by reciting a novena of indulgence, so that her sins could be forgiven.

  “My brother isn’t really my brother,” Agnes had said.

  I didn’t answer.

  “My mother had another husband but he hit her so she left him.” I didn’t really know what that meant; I didn’t think Portuguese people were allowed to “leave.”

  2:38 P.M. The second-floor kitchen window opened onto the gently sloped roof below. I wedged the plunger in the window jam and unfurled the beach towel my sister kept next to the sill; the baby oil and transistor radio remained on the floor. I screened my eyes against the sun and hopped quickly onto the towel; the soles of my feet were seared by the shingled roof.

  I knew my friends and other boys from the neighborhood would stop at our laneway on their bikes, where they’d get a clear view of my sister tanning in her bikini. Some would even venture a holler and something rude about her tits or her ass. Without missing a beat, her toe tapping, her arm would shoot up and she’d give them the middle finger. I wanted to say something, to defend her honor, but could never build up the nerve.

  I lay back and tucked my hands behind my head. The pole that held the sagging line of white sheets and underwear creaked with every puff of wind. I wanted to escape—saw how easy it would be to throw myself onto the pole and slide down, my inner thighs burning on the hot metal, crash into the cool patch of kale in the garden. I could run to the garage, feel for the latch on the door and roll it up, flood it with light and air and dust. I could jump on my bike, ride up the alley, and venture farther than ever to an undiscovered park or an alley unturned—run down the clock.

  I could let him wake up alone.

  3:14 P.M

  … With glowing hearts we see thee rise,

  The True North strong and free!

  The anthem blared once again. I crawled through the window and ran toward my bedroom, the floating blobs in my eyes adjusting to the light. I looked out my bedroom window. He must have run out of beer; he held a glass of homemade wine and stretched his arms into the hazy air. A full jug of wine, his reserve, sat tucked under his lawn chair. I caught a glimpse of Senhora Gloria as she came down the road toward our house. I watched her get closer and then I closed my eyes and willed her to continue down the road, skip our house altogether. When I opened my eyes she was undoing the latch to our wrought-iron gate. My father, half dressed, made his way down to the garden and bent over to wipe Jesus’ face with his hairy forearm. I worried that if he squatted too low he would topple into his shrine.

  “Ah … Senhor Manuel. You make a party?” She nodded her approval. People knew they were expected to speak to him in English—You live in Canada now, is what he’d say.

  “You no hot … in that Jesus dress?”

  “God keep me fresh, Senhor Manuel.”

  “Me too.” He turned to point at the glass of red wine that teetered on top of the curved alcove. She pretended not to notice. I could tell that she was trying very hard not to look at his groin.

  “Well … I come and ask you.” She sensed the need to be delicate. “You is a good man. This country is good. Now is time to give to church.”

  “Why?” He waited for an answer. There was none. “The church no give me nothing.”

  “Uma pia batismal—we need new one and we ask the communidade to—”

  “For what?” He moved directly in front of her like a bully. “For you to wash youself between the legs, you pinta smell fresh for you to make sex with Padre Costa?”

  He grinned, pleased with himself.

  She froze. Red shot through her face. She turned; her robe of brown swirled with her, then kicked back against her calves as she quickly retreated down the street.

  He looked up at me and laughed aloud. I hated him, and I hated myself for needing to stay.

  I moved away from the window and returned to my bench in front of the aquarium. The water rippled with the vibrations of the anthem. If I tried hard I could forget almost anything just by looking at my deep-sea diver and the fish. The male guppies were in constant competition. They darted in one direction or crossed over the front trying to stop the female guppies, corner them, before they tilted their penises sideways as they rubbed against the females and tried to stick them in. The males were the colorful ones; the females were plain and gray. A few of the females were pregnant; you could tell by their black abdomens, that’s what the chapter “Breeding Guppies” said.

  One of the large females swam quickly to the surface, took in a gulp of air, then stopped. She began to drop her “fry,” the little babies that have eyes bigger than their bodies. The other fish shot into a frenzy. Many gobbled up the babies as they plopped out of their mother. Even she got a few herself, took them in whole. Some males saw this as a perfect opportunity to have sex. I tried to tap o
n the glass, to stop them from eating, but then sat back helplessly to watch.

  … and stand on guard,

  O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

  5:08 P.M I thought it was best to bring him inside so he could watch the news read by his favorite anchor, Tom Gibney. My mother would be home soon. As I came down the stairs I didn’t even notice the anthem. I touched the mesh of the screen door. His slightly parted lips meant he was sleeping.

  “Pai!” I scratched the screen.

  “Pai! The news is on.” He stirred. I opened the door slightly to step out. That’s when I saw the caravan of bikes meandering down our street. I let the screen door slam and retreated to my room.

  I must have woken him, because I soon heard him shouting out the names of my friends. They were beginning to gather around our home on their bikes, expectantly. It was time for this year’s races. This, too, had become part of the Canada Day celebration.

  “Boys!” he yelled. “Come here!”

  This was the pre-race ritual; they had to introduce themselves formally. They usually giggled through this part. He would then have them place their hands over their hearts like Americans and sing the national anthem. There they were, mirroring the statue of Jesus, holding on to their hearts. They never asked for me. Tomorrow, they would pretend nothing had happened, wouldn’t mention a thing.

  Once the opening exercises were finished they raced around the block and through the laneways. The winner was always rewarded with a dollar. My father had made a special trip to the bank, only the day before, to change a twenty into ones. Off they went—Manny on his banana seat with its forked front, Dennis on his new Chopper, and a few of the younger boys on their bikes: George, Carlos, and Steven. They pedaled up the street until they disappeared around the corner. Ten minutes later my father walked down the path to the front gate, wearing only his yellowed boxer shorts and his little straw hat. His face, shoulders, and back were as red as a steamed lobster. He greeted the winner and awarded the prize with such excitement that it was difficult for him to stand. Every so often he fell and the boys would laugh. He would then crawl up the stairs and onto the veranda.