Barnacle Love

by Anthony De Sa

  “You need to know something. Your father came to this country with nothing—knowing no one. He came with a dream. He made a good life for himself, for your sister and you and me. Your father is a proud man; he’s proud of us all.”

  I didn’t want to start anything.

  “I know your father loves you. But life, a vida, was not supposed to be this way for him. Your father made big dreams for himself in Canada. The ones he helped come to this country are now doing much better than him; their dreams have come true. It’s not easy for him. Try to understand.”

  “So what was his dream?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure anymore, filho.”

  When we arrived my father struggled to read the signs at the train station, and I could tell he resigned himself to moving with the flow of the other passengers on our train. He hailed a cab from the platform. He did it with such flair, as if it was the kind of thing he was accustomed to. His regained confidence put me at ease in a strange way. He simply said, “To the Falls, please.”

  My father opened the cab door for my mother. I could hear the deep roaring of the great Falls. The mist had frozen on the trees that lined the river’s edge. They looked like glass cages, crystallized branches that reached down to touch the snow. The Falls were lit, a mass of color blocks—red, blue, pink, green—that seemed to pulse underneath the raging water that tumbled over the brink. What looked like an iceberg shaped in a semicircle had formed above the cataract that deflected huge amounts of water into the gorge, a stunning backdrop of white thundered down below. Even my sister leaned over the gorge’s railing and grinned, her breath streaming from between her teeth.

  I remembered a story from a school trip; an Indian woman had stepped into her canoe and, singing her death song softly to herself, paddled into the current and hurtled toward the Falls. But the gods or something like that saved her, and the rainbow became her gift to the people. It’s the kind of shit you just can’t make up, I thought.

  The Chinese lanterns hung in perfect rows over the tables, their red fringe swaying to our footsteps as we were led to a booth. It was clear the restaurant had once been a kind of fifties diner; some of the old touches were still there: quilted stainless steel in the kitchen peek-through, jukeboxes in the booths—ours was stuck on a Patsy Cline page: “Sweet Dreams,” “I Fall to Pieces,” and “Just a Closer Walk with Thee”—the Rolodex handles that flipped the pages long broken. The owners had tried to infuse the place with Chinese touches: scrolls of slashed writing, large plastic flower arrangements, the plucky music that played in the background, and the orange glow of paper lanterns across the red wallpaper and vinyl booths. The owners had made it into something they wanted, reinvented the place and breathed life into it.

  The restaurant was empty, except for an old man who sat near the front. It was freezing outside and he looked out the window running with condensation. He slurped his twisted noodles as if eating spaghetti. He had no teeth and I couldn’t look because the way he ate with his gums reminded me of other old people, of my Grandmother Theresa who had died only two months earlier and for whom my mother still wore black, and would most likely continue to do for the full two years she was obligated. It was the only place open that late on Christmas Eve, Mr. Wong’s.

  My sister shimmied along the vinyl bench patched with squares of duct tape. She bumped me over and smiled.

  “Where did your father go?” my mother asked.

  “He’s by the phone, Mãe,” I replied at the same time my sister said, “Looking for a liquor store that’s open.”

  My mother scowled at her. “Your father hasn’t had a drink in a year.” Her quick retort clearly indicated how anxious she was, uncertain of how the holiday would play itself out. “It’s important that he know we appreciate how much he wanted to do this for us.”

  My sister flipped through the menu.

  “I’m going to the bathroom,” I said.

  I stopped by a large aquarium. Three carp barely moved within its velvety green walls. They looked bored. Beside it was a nativity scene, lit with Christmas lights that sliced through the cracks in the crèche walls and lay in colorful lines across the gathered figures. They looked like they were at a disco. They were made of blue and white porcelain and they all looked Chinese, with their thinly painted eyes. I couldn’t help but smile.

  “The greatest gift,” someone whispered. I almost expected him to finish off with Little Grasshopper. I looked back and saw it was Mr. Wong—I assumed that was his name—the man who had earlier shown us to our booth and handed us our menus. His hair was cut too short; it stuck out at the back. He wore gold-rimmed spectacles that made me want to trust him. His yellow fingers reached in and lifted the Chinese Jesus. He reached for my hand, uncurled my fingers, and placed the tiny figurine in my palm. I motioned that I couldn’t but he closed my fingers over its smoothness and wouldn’t accept my refusal.

  “A gift of life. The cycle of birth and death. He is a great symbol of sacrifice.” He closed his eyes and it was as if he was praying or casting some kind of mental blessing, holding my hand tight as he did.

  Embarrassed, I slid Jesus into my pocket. My father half-grinned as he saw me approach, rolled his shoulder away from me and lowered his voice on the pay phone. I made my way into the bathroom. The shocking white and fluorescent lights popped me into a new reality. The bathroom walls were littered with old newspapers that had been glued, I thought, but on closer inspection I realized it was wallpaper made to look like a collage of old newspapers. The stories were all about the same thing: Niagara Falls stunts and daredevils, with graphic sepia-toned photographs of men crossing the Falls on a tightrope, holding a long pole for balance, or various concoctions of boats and barrels and the happy faces of the heroes, the ones who had made it over safely. There were other, more gruesome photographs of the many who had died trying, curled up in crumpled balls within their barrel walls or puffed and bloated after being dredged up weeks later. I was fascinated. It was then that my ears adjusted to my father’s muffled questions and curses coming through the paper-thin doors.

  “Nothing? Not one room for four peoples—impossible—nothing at all? … Train station closed—where I go? Where my family going to go? … I want to speak to manager. Hello … hello.” He crashed the receiver into its holder just as I walked by shaking my wet hands in the air.

  “Why you no dry your hands in the washroom?”

  “Didn’t you reserve a hotel?”

  He grabbed the side of my head. At sixteen I was now taller than him. He drew my face close to his.

  “I make everything okay. You hear me?” It was a threat that had been spurred by my challenge: stupidity, incompetence, failure, whatever judgment it was that he had registered in my voice.

  “Let go!” I said.

  “Why can’t those canaries shut up?” Terri moved her hands to her temples. “It’s like a fucken zoo in here.”

  “Watch you mouth. You is nineteen but that no mean you—”

  “I’m twenty.”

  My father looked wounded, but only for a moment.

  “Manuel.” My mother playfully flicked at his cufflink. “What should we eat? I don’t know anything …”

  My father turned to stare out the window.

  “Can I take your order?” Mr. Wong bowed.

  “I’d like the chicken balls with—”

  “Terezinha, your father will make the order for our food,” my mother said.

  My sister dropped the menu and made small circles with her fingertips at her temples.

  “Mr. Wong?” I felt stupid the minute I spoke the words. “Is there some way we can stop the noise from the birds? My sister here—”

  “Oh, this not noise,” Mr. Wong said.

  “Squawking, chirping, whatever. Could you just get them to stop?” Terri piped up.

  “Sometimes beautiful song cover up deep hurt,” Mr. Wong said.

  Terri chuckled. “Confucius say …” she added.

  I thou
ght my father was going to jump out of his seat and strangle her.

  “Birds in cages sing. To some, sound like beautiful song. But we do not know; we do not have the words,” Mr. Wong added. “A great puzzle.”

  “These Chinese, they is smart people.” I could see my father tapping his forehead through the veil from the steaming noodles. “They come to this country with nothing and live like animals, twenty, maybe thirty in one house. Like dogs they work, in restaurants or factories, whatever, and no complaints. They is cheap and they save everything they can. Before you know they no wear their short pants and Chinese slippers anymore. No. They buy leather shoes and expensive gabardines. They pay for houses in cash-money. They is smart these people, I tell you.”

  My mother had managed to eat a couple of shrimp but refused to touch the noodles my father had ordered.

  “I can’t, Manuel, I’m full,” my mother said as she continued to draw the noodles to the edge of her plate. I knew she thought they looked like cats’ guts. She used to say that Chinese people ate cats, and whenever a cat went missing, there was always a well-fed family somewhere in our neighborhood.

  “Mãe, these are noodles,” I offered.

  “Leave your mother. If she want to eat, she eat,” my father said.

  “This is nice,” my mother said.

  “Oh, this is nothing. When I traveled across Canada on a train, so beautiful this country. You no see nothing like this in the world. It take the breath out of me.”

  “Not completely,” Terri mumbled.

  “Is that it? My children laugh at me?”

  “No, Manuel, they just—”

  “I know what they is doing.”

  The silence was broken by his fist hitting the table. “You no know how much I had in me. You can’t see.” His voice shook. “I leave Portugal on fishing boat and I know I not going to come back. I give everything away to follow something new. I no understand what but something inside push me here—to make something of myself in this land. I come to be someone in this world. If you are going to fazer uma América then let this country shape you. That is what Mateus say to me one day.”

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  My father looked at my mother. “I almost lose my life once when I come to this country. I push off from the Argus into the ocean. Three days,” he roared, “I float in the open waters until a storm come and rip into me and my boat and I let go … dropped to the bottom of the sea …”

  I wasn’t quite sure if he paused for dramatic effect or if the recollection was overwhelming him. It didn’t matter; I just wanted the elusive story that I had heard only in snippets throughout my life.

  “But I is saved. I turn my back on everything I know to make a life in Canada. Do you understand how hard that is for me?”

  “Pai.” I surprised myself by referring to him in Portuguese. “There are people that have gone over the Falls in a barrel and they’ve survived.”

  As if on cue my mother made the sign of the cross and piped up, “Never. Those are crazy people.”

  He wavered, looked at my sister sternly, uncertain if he should be drawn in by my deflection. “Not exactly.” My father had taken the bait. “Is true there is adventure in all of us.” My mother looked unconvinced. “Everyone has adventure in the brains and in the heart and it make some men famous, rich even.”

  “Don’t forget dead,” my sister added, wiping the corners of her mouth.

  “Mãe, they go over in a barrel and the barrel is filled with padding and pillows so I think you just come out of—”

  “Balance, filho. No forget balance. This is most important. I say you have to know how the barrel goes over, in what direction and angle.” My father seemed pleased with the turn in discussion.

  “I think it’s stupid,” my mother said. “You can die.”

  My father looked incredulous. I knew she was playing along with it. But his tone was becoming insulting, and soon even she wouldn’t want to play any longer.

  “A man need to make a mark in this world. You still no understand,” he said. “Women no understand these things. A man have dreams.” He stared at the water-stained ceiling and scratched his stubbly neck with his knuckles.

  Mr. Wong came over to clear the table. He left four fortune cookies on a small dish and took the thirty dollars my father had laid on the table. He was leaving Mr. Wong a seventy-eight-cent tip and waved him off as if he should be pleased with his generosity.

  “A closed mouth gathers no feet,” my sister read. She crumpled the fortune between her fingers then flicked it across the table. “What the hell does that mean?”

  My mother copied the way we had cracked our cookies, then handed the paper to me to read. A dream is not responsible to the one who believes in it. My mother crunched on the cookie and looked pleased.

  “Let me see mine. Thing are lost when not used.”

  “Ooooh, like your manhood,” my sister smirked.

  “Shut up!”

  “Why you no be more of lady, like your mother. I no want to remember Christmas like this.” My father’s strong hand had pinned my sister’s hand to the table.

  “Manuel, Manuel, Manuel,” my mother whispered through clenched teeth as she scanned the room to see if anyone was looking.

  “There is no one here, Mãe,” I said.

  “You no have respect! You make fun of everything I say.” He pressed down hard, his arm rigid.

  I grabbed him by the wrist. “Let go,” I said as I squeezed harder and wedged his hand open. He drew his trembling hand away then tucked it under the table. My sister glared at him. She was not afraid.

  “Who make sure there is food on the table?” he began. “Who give you school, to teach you right and wrong, huh?”

  My mother started moving in her seat, rolled from one ass cheek to the other.

  “Manuel, everyone is tired,” she pleaded.

  “I no come to this country to make a life for myself and for you to laugh and throw this in my face like paper you clean your ass with.” His voice was raised. Mr. Wong and the cook remained in the kitchen area.

  “You is good-for-nothing—all of you. After all the things I do for you. A nice house, clothes, and—”

  I blurted a laugh, a quick snort that made his head snap in my direction. It stunned my mother and sister both. But for once there was no reprimand, and there was no use backpedaling.

  “You think it was easy for us. All you talk about is how hard it was and when you were my age and all that martyr shit. But did you ever think how hard it was for me? How hard it still is to try and live a dream you never claimed?”

  “Filho!” my mother interjected softly.

  I raised a hand to stop her. My father sat silent; his face betrayed nothing and, in so doing, welcomed me to push further. I leaned over the table, moved closer to him until I could clearly see the spider-like veins that crept across his nose and cheeks.

  “Do you even know what I want out of life? Does it even matter?”

  He looked straight at me. I could hear the blood pulsing in my ears. The room began to spin, brilliant lights that wobbled in my head. The only figure that stood clear and resolute was that of my father. His silence was beginning to drain the power I thought I held over him. I was uncertain of what I had done.

  “I’m tired,” my sister yawned. “Let’s check in to the hotel.”

  “More like the train station,” I said.

  My father’s scowl moved over me. He was disgusted with my betrayal. It was the same expression I had gazed upon all my life. He didn’t want to understand. The love was there, but only beneath the bruised surface of our relationship.

  “Manuel?”

  “That’s great! That’s just fucken remarkable.” My father did not flinch at my sister’s outburst, her choice of words. “Stranded here in Niagara Falls on the coldest day of the year and nowhere to go.” Terri began to scramble through her purse, pushing the contents aside, looking for something.

  “Manuel, we�
��ll have to go home,” my mother said.

  I buried my face in my hands, scratched my itchy scalp with my palms. I was tired and just wanted to disappear, wanted them all to just disappear.

  “I’m calling Luis. He’ll pick us up.”

  Luis was my sister’s boyfriend. She had been invited to spend Christmas Eve with his family this year, had accepted then had been embarrassed to have to say no.

  She moved to the pay phone. On her way she grabbed a folded tablecloth, snapped it into the air, and draped the suspended canary cage with it. “Driving me fucken nuts.”

  “One cannot lose something they never had,” my father whispered, then flicked his fortune on the table. He had rubbed the narrow strip of paper between his thumb and forefinger until it coiled like a tiny spring. It sat on the table slowly unraveling. The snow had begun to fall. It was dark now.

  “Pai, I didn’t mean—”

  “I know, filho, I know,” he replied, his eyes fixed on the window, brimming with tears. “This not the place for old mans, is for the young and strong.”

  “As long as we’re together. That’s the most important thing.” My mother wove her arm with my father’s. He did not resist.

  “Only a few people have ever survived the Falls.”

  I waited but there was no answer.

  “I read on the bathroom walls about the stunts that happened over the Falls,” I continued, but still there was only this ominous silence. “They became famous. But how could you survive?” I was trying to tangle myself in his web so he could show me his superior knowledge of science or brilliance in engineering. He liked nothing more. I thought it would knock my father out of his strange daze, alleviate the concern carved on my mother’s forehead.

  “Pai, did you hear me?”

  He looked at us and smiled generously.

  “I can’t get a hold of him. They’ve probably gone to midnight mass,” Terri said.