Kicking the Sky

by Anthony De Sa

  I turned up Yonge Street and stopped in the shadow of the Eaton Centre, across the street from Charlie’s Angels. Above the door some products were being advertised in plastic letters: Movies, Sex Toys, Magazines, Books. The store’s window promised SEXY GIRLS. Some men were boarding up the door and windows with plywood, but they hadn’t covered everything: the painted figure of a half-naked woman and the words Your happiness may depend on it were still exposed. It was a tall building, five storeys high, and it looked like all the others that lined Yonge Street. The building had been blocked off with yellow tape. I stood there straddling my bike, leaning over my handlebars. My head felt fuzzy, but I hoped I’d see Emanuel’s body. If I got close to him, I could pray in Portuguese, the way my grandmother taught me. Prayers are heard faster if you pray in Portuguese, she’d say. The news teams, reporters, and everyone else who gathered were all waiting for something to happen.

  It was getting dark. I was pedalling up Palmerston Avenue so slowly I was barely moving, just fighting to keep my balance. Where was everyone? I passed one empty porch after another. I had never seen our street so dark. Curtains were drawn. Porch lights were switched off.

  I turned across Robinson Street to go through the laneway. My uncle’s garage door was closed. I made my way up toward the patch of light that beamed into the laneway from Mr. Serjeant’s garage. I stopped. The man was painting the inside of the garage, whitewashing everything. His back was to me. I could see his blond curly hair poking out under his cycling cap. His tank top was drenched, glued to his skin.

  “Terrible, isn’t it?” He continued to paint, to my relief. He stood on a stool. I saw his ankles and thought his feet must be tanned too. It was the last thing I thought of before I realized he could see my reflection in a window.

  “I’m James,” he said. He twisted around to face me.

  “I know,” I managed, before I felt my tongue getting fat. My chest ached. James was in the middle of saying something when I turned away from him and pressed down hard on the pedals. I didn’t let up until I came out onto Palmerston Avenue, where I saw my mother leaning over our front gate. Across the road, the worm-picker bus revved its engine and slowly rolled away toward Queen Street.

  “Where did you go? Get in that house now!” She smelled of blood sausages, onions, and paprika. She had been crying.

  I walked my bike through our gate and dropped it on the front lawn. The back wheel spun in the air.

  It wasn’t cold, but she drew her sweater tightly across her chest, tucked her hands under her armpits. I caught her looking out through the storm door before sliding the latch to Lock. Then she shut the front door and secured the deadbolt.

  The sound of my mother’s slippers slapping against her heels chased me up to the bathroom. I stood beside the tub and wiggled my fingers in the water. It was cold now. My mother stood in the doorway. With my back to her, I quickly undressed, wrapped a towel around my waist. I just stood there.

  “What are you waiting for?” she said. “Get in the water before it gets any colder.”

  “I need privacy.”

  “You got to be careful, Antonio. It’s not safe anymore,” she said before leaving.

  I dunked myself quickly, scrubbed my skin raw with the washcloth until a layer of grey scum covered the entire surface of the cold bathwater.

  I wasn’t sure how long I had been lying in my bed before John F. Kennedy’s voice made its way up to my room and I knew my father was home. The recording of JFK was displayed on a bracket that once held a plate. My father played it over and over whenever he was sad or when he sensed things had changed, or were about to change. I heard my father’s boots, the rhythm of his step climbing the stairs. Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country. There was his smell: Old Spice, Craven “A,” the sweetness of homemade wine.

  When he walked in I saw his forehead was covered in tiny beads of sweat.

  He looked away for one moment and rocked forward as if he’d thought better of it and would leave. He cracked his knuckles.

  He sat down and looked like he was about to say something. I could see the patches of silver stubble on his chin and upper lip. The veins in his neck pumped. He drew the heel of his palm across his forehead, then reached over and rubbed my earlobe with his thick fingers. His bottom lip trembled.

  I didn’t want him to cry.

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

  — 5 —

  MY NIGHTMARES BEGAN the night Emanuel’s body was found. I was being chased, running barefoot through the laneway. The laneway looked different, like what it would have looked like a hundred years back, with barns in place of garages. There were open fields instead of fences. Small stones and shards of glass cut into my dirty feet. As I ran, my hands chopped the wind in front of me. I could hear pursuers puffing and blowing behind me, mocking you boy with the pretty hair. I got something I’d like to share. Little boy with the pretty hair.

  I was still perspiring when I made my way down to the kitchen. I opened the window and cooled my head in the morning breeze. It was as if the discovery of Emanuel’s body had cracked the heat wave.

  I was shocked to see my mother sitting in the backyard, alone. She never missed work. A week after I was born, she was back on the job at the hospital. She told me she couldn’t afford to stay at home. I felt shitty whenever she told me that story.

  “Not going to work today, Mãe?”

  “No, I need to stay home today.” She took a sip from her teacup and placed it down. She spun the cup a little in its saucer.

  “Mãe?”

  She didn’t look my way.

  “You know the swallow makes a sound,” she began, so quietly I could barely hear her. “Not really a sound, a kind of whisper. Back home in São Miguel swallows were the first sign that the cold days were over.” She lifted the teacup to her lips.

  “I thought it never got cold in São Miguel.”

  “Damp like worms.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a real swallow,” I said.

  “I didn’t want to come here. Canada seemed so far away. I wanted to move to Lisbon.”

  I’d never hear that before. “Why did you come, then?”

  “Your father came to Canada a few years before me. He needed to get away, and he was happy here. He said Portugal was too sad.”

  Manny and Ricky should have been somewhere in the laneway. I walked up and down the lane before deciding I’d just wait for them in the Patch. Every little sound made me nervous. I had been there fifteen minutes and I thought I’d give my friends ten more minutes to show up before making my way over to Edite’s. My mother only let me leave the house because I promised I’d head straight to Edite’s to take her some homemade jam.

  A monarch butterfly landed on the ground, clapping its wings in the sun. I walked up to it. The trick was pinching its wings together, trying to not rub off any of the rusty powder so it could still fly. I reached down, my fingers ready to pinch. The air was jabbed by a muffler backing up. The butterfly took flight just as the jar under my arm smashed on the gravel.

  The stairs leading up to Edite’s apartment were narrow and dark. All her windows were open, and fans scanned the kitchen like giant periscopes. She had been living there for more than a year now and the place smelled of stale cigarettes. I passed by her bedroom: a mattress on the floor with a ruffled bedspread, a big Chinese fan on her wall in place of a headboard, and a silk scarf draped over her lamp. Clothes, blankets, beaded jewellery, and newspapers were scattered over the floor and bed. It wasn’t like any other Portuguese house I had ever been to. Edite said she liked to keep it that way; she could scoop all her belongings into a garbage bag at a moment’s notice and drive away in her convertible.

  I walked down the hall and stopped to make the sign of the cross at Johnny’s picture. It was
perched on top one of the towers of old newspapers she kept piled along the hall. Johnny had large dark eyes, and his face was framed with black curls, nothing like his mother’s. Edite sat at her kitchen table, reading the newspaper. Her cigarette smouldered in the ashtray.

  SHOESHINE BOY, 12, FOUND SLAIN. Underneath the headline was a grimy photo of the Charlie’s Angels storefront.

  “You’re here. What took you so long? Hold on, before you answer that let me call your mother.” Edite picked up the phone and dialed. “You want some coffee?” she whispered, just as my mother’s panicked voice came through. “Georgina, he’s here. He’s okay,” Edite said, looping then unlooping the phone cord around her pointing finger. “No, it’s okay. It’s my fault. I forgot to call you when he arrived.” I caught my mother’s voice directing threats at me in Portuguese. Edite returned the receiver to its base. “In hot climates they drink hot drinks, you know. Supposed to cool you off.” Before I could say no she was at the counter pouring me a cup from her percolator. I chipped away at the sugar until I got about four teaspoon-sized nuggets. I was used to having a milked-down version of coffee that my mother prepared for me, filled with crushed digestive biscuits to sop up all the liquid. “We’re just a bit worried, Antonio.” Edite poured herself a refill. She reached up to the cabinet and brought down a small bottle of something golden. I thought it was honey or maple syrup until she stirred her coffee and I smelled the booze.

  The first time I met Edite, at Kensington Market, my eyes landed on her before my mother had even introduced us. She stood beside a barrel filled with pickled herring and plastic bins packed with dried beans, grains, and powdery spices. She was thin and beautiful. Her head was slightly tilted, and a cigarette was wedged in the corner of her mouth. She caught me staring and her coral lips stretched wide. I turned away to look at the rows of stacked cages filled with chickens, ducks, rabbits, and pigeons.

  My mother’s hand tightened around my wrist. She kissed the woman on both cheeks. “Antonio, meet your aunt Edite.”

  Aunt Edite wore makeup and painted her nails. She kept herself thin by cutting meat from her diet, drinking Tab whenever she wanted, and smoking Camels. She had also joined the Vic Tanny’s fitness club on Richmond Street, something no Portuguese woman I knew ever did. There wasn’t a hint of Portuguese in the way she spoke. She had moved to the States when she was fourteen, got married at sixteen, and was widowed at twenty. An industrial accident, my father told me. My mother had agreed to meet her in Kensington Market, amidst all the fruit stands and fishmongers, but then she practically had to drag her home with us. It was clear from the conversation on the way home that my father had no idea my mother knew Edite was in Toronto. Edite settled into her own apartment on Markham Street, a few houses up from where Ricky lived with his father. She said she needed to get away from America for a little while. She told my mother she had been offered a job here working for a newspaper, and she took it. She had worked at the Boston Herald before starting at the Toronto Star. Her hands were soft. Her fingers only knew typewriter keys, not harsh detergents and the chemicals used to disinfect toilets and strip floors.

  A few nights later, I had overheard my father fighting with my mother. Edite was louca and uma tola, he said, which I knew meant she was nuts. A single woman living on her own would get people gossiping. He had an obligation to protect our family’s reputation.

  Sitting at the table, our coffees in hand, Edite began to read Tuesday’s paper out loud: “ ‘Behind the sleazy facade of this body-rub parlour at 245 Yonge Street police found the body of twelve-year-old shoeshine boy Emanuel Jaques. They smashed glass panes in the front door at 6:30 a.m. to search, and found a body on the roof at the back. The boy had been missing four days. Four men are being held for questioning.’ ”

  Edite lowered the paper and slid it over to me on the kitchen table. Emanuel’s sister, through her sobs, told the reporter that he “very much liked to make money but he wasn’t greedy. He didn’t rush out and spend it; he knew it had to go into the bank.”

  The sound of a baby crying pealed across the asphalt. I wondered why Emanuel’s cry hadn’t sped between the dirty buildings with their neon signs.

  “I’m not sure what’s going to happen next, Antonio. But things are about to get a lot worse.”

  “But they caught the men, didn’t they? It’s over.”

  “It’s just beginning. Now it turns into a blame game. The Portuguese blame the politicians and the police for not protecting the boy. They’ll take matters into their own hands and they’ll target the homosexuals simply because they hate and fear them. The police will crack down on all the illegal stuff they’ve been turning a blind eye to downtown, especially among the homosexuals, because they think it will deflect blame and responsibility from them. And the politicians just see votes—they’ll make promises they don’t even believe, only to keep their butts in office.”

  We build their houses. We clean their houses. We mind their children. For what? For this? For them to do this to one of our children? This is not why we came. I had heard these words coming out of Edite’s radio.

  “You know what it is to be afraid, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Your mother didn’t go to work today because she’s frightened.” Edite stared at me through the cigarette smoke.

  “She freaked me out this morning. The way she was just sitting in the backyard not doing anything. I thought she was going to cry.”

  “She’s frightened for you. She’s thinking it could have been you instead of Emanuel.”

  “That could never happen to me.”

  “Why?”

  I couldn’t tell her that I was safe because me, Ricky, and Manny were blood brothers and would protect each other.

  “Your mom and dad have to work. There’s no one at home to look after you guys. I know you’re a good kid, and you’re lucky to have your friends, but things are going to change.”

  “How?”

  “I can’t say for sure. We’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime I’ll show you where I keep an extra key so that you can always come here.”

  I was thrilled Edite trusted me, but I could tell she was holding back. It was the way her words came out of her mouth—between little burps of breath.

  “Aunt Edite, are you afraid?”

  “Not really.”

  “How come?”

  She smacked her lips. “Oh, I’m not Portuguese with all that sadness, the saudade they’re drowning in. No, I stopped being Portuguese long ago.”

  “You can’t just stop being Portuguese,” I said. “Can you?”

  Edite brushed past me and tousled my hair. “I know I don’t let anyone tell me how to act or feel.”

  From her back landing, Edite was one of the few people who had a clear view of our laneway. She knew more about what went on there than any of the other adults in our lives. She never said anything about what she must have seen, though once she told me how much she enjoyed watching us race across the rooftops.

  “What do you know about that new guy living in Mr. Serjeant’s garage?” I said.

  “His name is James. Spoke to him a bit. He reminds me of my Johnny.” She put her cigarette down in the ashtray and raked her fingers through her hair. “He’s just looking for a fresh start.”

  “From what?”

  Edite ignored my question. “Your cousin Johnny was always getting himself into trouble. But deep down he was a good kid, you know. We should never have gone to war. We were fighting and we didn’t even know who the enemy was.” That was the thing about Edite; she spoke to me with words she would have used with adults. And when she asked me something, like How’s it going? she actually waited around long enough to hear the answer.

  “Do you think you’ll ever find Johnny?” I asked.

  She picked up her pack of Camels. I lifted the smouldering one in the ashtray and offered it to her, my fingers sticking to the lipstick ring around the filter.

  Edite pinched the ci
garette with her nails and took a long drag from it. She closed her eyes. “I have to keep hoping.” The cigarette trembled between her fingers, and her foot tapped faster.

  — 6 —

  “NOT LIKE THAT, Terezinha, the forks go on the right side of the plate,” my mother said. Terri rolled her eyes. “My feet are killing me,” my mother continued. “I waited in line for over an hour at the rectory. There were hardly any medallions left.”

  “Medallions for what?” Terri asked.

  “Which saint did you get?” I asked.

  “The ones Padre Costa blessed were a dollar more. By the time I got up, St. Benedict was sold and so was St. Jude.”

  “What does St. Benedict represent?” Terri asked, placing the last fork on the right side of the plate.

  I told her, “He’s the most powerful saint against evil spirits or magic spells.”

  “But what do you want them for?” Terri tried again.

  “So who did you choose?” I asked, enjoying my sister’s frustration.

  “I was lucky enough to get a whole bunch of St. Anthony medallions.” My mother set the last soup bowl on a plate and reached for my cheek, but I moved away.

  “Why him? Isn’t he kind of useless?” Terri smiled.

  “Filha, he’s the saint of lost things.”

  “But we haven’t lost anything, Mãe,” I said.

  My mother stayed up that night sewing the medallions onto my undershirts and inside the pockets of my pants. The next morning, Terri charged into my room, flicking her bra strap at me. “Mom’s losing it! She sewed those damn things on everything I own.”

  “Maybe she thought it would keep the creeps from going at your boobs.”

  Terri jumped over my bed and lunged at me. I deked her out and ran down to the basement.

  My mother wouldn’t let me go out with my friends. She said my friends weren’t allowed out either. I knew Ricky’s dad didn’t really have rules for him, so he didn’t count, but my mother was wrong. Manny’s parents hadn’t cranked up the rules in their house. Manny and Ricky had been hanging around without me. But I saw the worry on her face and stopped pushing. She had to go back to work, so she left long lists of chores for us to do, things to keep us at home and out of trouble—polishing the brass doorknobs, dusting the gumwood baseboards on the main floor, and vacuuming the living-room broadloom so that the stripes the vacuum cleaner left wouldn’t get messed up. I noticed that one of the jobs on my sister’s list was to take over to Senhora Gloria some mail that had been accidentally delivered to our mailbox.