Kicking the Sky

by Anthony De Sa

  “Whose turn is it today?” Mr. Sowerby’s glasses barely clung to the tip of his nose as he looked down his list.

  “It’s me,” I said, not even bothering to sit at my desk as we all shuffled in. “I picked something from yesterday’s paper.” Mr. Sowerby sank into his chair. “The Toronto Star. Wednesday, September fourteenth.” Mr. Sowerby looked pleased with my presentation voice. “Fifteen charges face operator of sex shops.” I scanned the room. It was clear they’d all be listening carefully.

  “WHO?” Mr. Sowerby yelled.

  “Joseph Martin, forty-three. He managed Yonge Street sex shops. He controlled Charlie’s Angels body-rub shop.”

  “Massage parlour,” Mr. Sowerby said, even though the article clearly said body-rub shop. “WHAT?”

  My paper rustled in my hands. “He was arrested.”

  “WHERE?”

  “Toronto.”

  “WHEN?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “The date, Mr. Rebelo.”

  “Tuesday, September thirteenth.”

  “Thank you. WHY?”

  “Keeping a bawdy shop was one reason. It says he was—” I looked down at the newspaper clipping, knew I had to get it right, “ ‘living off the avails of prostitution.’ ”

  “What does that mean?” Mr. Sowerby raised his voice. “Tell the class.”

  “It means he was like a pimp.”

  Some of the kids snickered.

  “Antonio, we don’t use words like that. Agent. Procurer. Even panderer can be used. We’re still on the WHY? I’m waiting for a clearer reason.”

  “They want to clean up Yonge Street.” I knew Mr. Sowerby wouldn’t like the vagueness in the way I answered his question. “It’s about getting perverts off the streets and out of business so that what happened to Emanuel doesn’t happen to another kid.”

  The class went quiet for the longest time. Then Mr. Sowerby invited comments.

  Pedro’s hand shot up. “My mom said that when those guys killed Emanuel they killed something inside of us.”

  “Is that true?” Mr. Sowerby asked the class.

  “Nah. It’s just made things a bit harder.” Pedro laughed. “We gotta lie more.”

  “Antonio?”

  “Yes?”

  “Would you like to add something?”

  “My dad put a bolt on our front door” was the first thing that popped into my head.

  “Because your parents want you to be safe.” Mr. Sowerby sounded so sure of himself.

  “Something like that. I mean, at school we’re never alone. Like when we have to go in pairs to the bathroom. But at home our parents still go to work every day and night because they say they have no choice,” I said, “even though there are crazies out there like that Saul Betesh guy.”

  “We don’t know anything about this man, Antonio,” Mr. Sowerby said.

  “I know he was adopted by a Jewish family and grew up with lots of money. And that when he was five he saw a psychiatrist.”

  Edite had managed to get her hands on some kind of psychological assessment from some cops she knew who were assigned to the case. I found the report on her kitchen table. Saul Betesh had been kicked out of every school he ever went to. He was aggressive and vicious.

  “Is that in your article?” Mr. Sowerby said. “I don’t want neighbourhood gossip. You need to stick to the article you selected.”

  The class got fidgety. I heard someone say faggot. Mr. Sowerby heard it too, I was sure, but he did that thing teachers do when they pretend not to hear something so they don’t have to deal with the kid or the office.

  “Calm down, class!”

  “He was a homo.” I made the word sound hateful, just the way I wanted the class to hear it. Still, I couldn’t block the image of James coming out of the basement shower, steam swirling around his naked body. “That’s why he decided to sell himself. He figured it was a good way to survive the streets.”

  “That’s quite enough, Antonio.” Mr. Sowerby stood beside me, nudging me to return to my seat, but I didn’t move.

  “He liked that feeling of power,” I said.

  I had half an hour before my disciples—the name my father jokingly gave them—were allowed in. The laneway had become off limits during certain times of the day. My father said there were people lurking out there, trying to catch me alone. I made my way over two fences and into Uncle David’s backyard. The light sifted down through the leaves, their tiny shadows trembling in the breeze. We had waited so long for a breeze and it felt good. I sat under Uncle David’s fig tree, where scarred earth hadn’t quite healed. I imagined the worms and bugs eating away at the pig’s guts, breaking them down until they became nothing more than the soil again. The branches of the fig tree had grown heavy with fruit since then. My uncle had smuggled the seedling into the country from his yard back home on the island. It had been carefully packed in his luggage with a wheel of Portuguese cheese, chouriço, and some live crabs. That was fifteen years ago. Every October a large hole the size of a crater was dug and the fig tree gently rocked, careful not to damage the roots, until it tipped slowly into the hole. The crown was bound with twine before it was laid on its side below. It was then covered with plywood and tarp before soil was tossed back over it to keep the tree protected from another harsh winter. In the spring, the men would meet—only the men—and the tree would be dug up, the bare branches reaching up to kiss the sun, as my mother would say.

  My mother appeared, climbing up the basement-stairs walkout into my uncle’s backyard. She was dressed in a zippered housedress, her hair in large curlers smothered under her sheer headscarf. She ducked under branches and sat beside me.

  I shifted my back away from her a bit and turned the page of my book. I caught a whiff of her Skin So Soft smell.

  “You okay?” she asked, only after an awkward silence and the flicking of pages had worn her down.

  “I just wanted to read a bit.”

  She looked over my shoulder to take a peek at my copy of Lord of the Flies. My mother motioned to my book with her chin. “What’s it about?”

  “A group of kids who find themselves all alone on an island.”

  “You’ll never be alone.”

  I didn’t respond.

  “It’s not easy for me, you know, leaving you and your sister at home by yourselves.”

  “I thought he’d show me off in the garage maybe once a week. Not every day!”

  My mother took in a deep breath and switched to Portuguese. “Sometimes when I’m hanging up the clothes or working in the garden, just when it looks dark and it will never brighten up, the sky clears and the rays from the sun come shooting down to warm my shoulders.”

  “I don’t like it when you talk in riddles.”

  “It means I will take care of you. I need some time.” My mother’s voice shook a bit. “Don’t be afraid, filho. Jesus is watching over us.”

  I didn’t say anything for the longest time. I wanted to believe her, but I knew she’d have to stand up to my father to make it stop. She needed to be brave, much braver than me.

  “Is that why you put the swallow charm in my cape?”

  She looked up into the canopy, and started to get up and pat the dirt off her skirt.

  “It’s the one that was on your necklace, isn’t it? Who gave you the necklace?”

  “It was a gift,” she said. “It will all be over soon, Antonio. Trust me.” She ducked under the branches and walked away.

  “Mãe!”

  She looked back. “I promise,” she said, before descending the stairs into the basement.

  My mother dragged me to church, to balance everything out, to show parishioners that I was a normal boy, but everything the priest said made me feel bad and dirty and that the world would end and gobble us up unless we prayed for forgiveness and salvation. I didn’t want to believe him.

  It must have been close to noon. Twelve to three o’clock were my Saturday hours. I could hear the sad voice of Amália Rod
rigues, Portugal’s greatest fado singer, blaring from someone’s open window. The smells of barbecued sardines mixed with the smell of the morning’s laundry. I looked up through the branches of the fig tree that closed in on me like a cage.

  Later that afternoon, I sat on my chair in the empty garage. My father had started wearing a suit to greet those who came. And he had taken to dressing in his room, getting the knot in his tie just right. I could hear people outside, singing, praying, brushing up against our garage door.

  Figuring out facts and fiddling with numbers made things easier for me. Fifty-one days had passed since Emanuel was found dead. Fifty-five days if you counted the four days he’d been missing before they discovered his body. It had been two weeks since Labour Day, nine full school days since my father first opened our garage door to strangers. During weekdays it was only two hours, or a hundred and twenty minutes—seven to nine. People came before setting out for their second jobs. My father had quit his night job cleaning the TD Bank. Not enough time for everything, he said. Each evening the crowds got bigger. People now came in from the suburbs: Mississauga, Brampton, and Oakville, places I had never been. My father said some had come from as far as Hamilton and Niagara Falls. A man had driven twelve hours from Fall River, Massachusetts. He wanted to see the limpet and kiss the feet of the miracle boy. He said it in front of everyone. He was certain I could tell him where his wife was hiding, where she had taken his little girls. People were getting crazier, and my legs got all soft and shaky every time I got in the chair. My father watched like a hawk.

  One guy on the pilgrimage—that’s what Edite called it—brought a pile of Wintario lottery tickets, as thick as a deck of cards. He scratched them at my feet, rocking and sweating. The crowd got angry, and my father pulled him out kicking into the laneway. Another man came to tell me he had lost his fingers in a meat grinder at a factory that made hamburger patties for a big fast-food chain. He flicked his tongue out of his mouth like a lizard after almost every word. His hands had been frozen cold so he hadn’t felt a thing when he pushed the meat through the grinder. At first I thought he wanted me to pray for a way to get his boss and the company he worked for to pay for what had happened to him. Instead, he wanted me to kiss his ten pink nubs and pray for new fingers to grow. There were so many times that I wanted to run.

  Every night they came. Many returned, frustrated that nothing had happened. My father explained their religion had taught them to be patient. Others went around professing they had been healed. They’d come back with another family member, claiming they themselves had been saved. When I heard these confessions, a lump would build in my throat and I began to believe myself. But I knew it wasn’t true. How could anything they prayed for come true? I wasn’t special. If I were, I’d know.

  — 3 —

  IS TOPPED GOING TO Senhora Rosa’s. Ricky told me she had a Polaroid of me on the scratchy glass counter by the register, a rosary draped over the picture frame and a prayer candle that burned during store hours. Instead, I went to Mr. Jay’s store, which was just a block south of our house. All we knew about Mr. Jay was that he was Italian and his store smelled of old books and garlic and cat litter. A massive Pepsi-Cola refrigerator that sat in the corner of the store took up a quarter of the floor space. It was so deep we could easily fall into it reaching for pop or a Kisko Kid. Mr. Jay’s assortment of Surprise Packs, chocolate bars, and lime licorice string was tossed around the sill of the bay window. I never bought chocolate bars from him, or wax skeletons for that matter: the chocolate and wax melted in the sun and it was a dirty job licking chocolate off wrappers.

  “Hey, hey! The Jesus boy,” Mr. Jay roared, his heavy accent not too different from Portuguese. “Or maybe St. Superboy.” I placed a bottle of soda on the uneven counter and handed Mr. Jay a dollar bill. He gave me my change in pennies, seventy-five of them pushed across the counter, one by one, with his pointing finger. He wasn’t even counting, just wanted me in the store as long as it took him to mumble a prayer under his breath. Where the hell was I going to get my Pepsi now? I looked out the window and was distracted by Peter ambling around the corner, his bundle buggy and red scarf trailing behind.

  The minute I left the store, I turned up Palmerston, Pepsi bottle in hand. I scanned the rows of houses, looking for the flash of Peter’s red scarf. When I was on my throne, my father kept our garage door open. Peter passed by once. I saw him clearly above the heads of everyone crammed in the garage, and I desperately wanted to be stuffed in his bundle buggy, carted away from them all. But Peter simply looked ahead and kept walking. Since then he had been showing up in my nightmares, moving toward me, his scarf flapping in the wind. Seeing him, even in my nightmares, made me feel safe: he was unchanged—someone I recognized. The men with no faces were still chasing me, but they would disappear the minute Peter reached me and his face eclipsed the sun, his tumour gone.

  I ran a bit, looking over the hoods of parked cars, across the yards of the Chinese neighbours with their bean poles and flapping plastic bags all set up in their front gardens. But Peter had vanished.

  When I got home, Terri was standing at the kitchen table, carefully wrapping a small block of cheese. She placed it in a bag and held it out to me. “Go ahead,” she said. “There’s some stew and bread in there for your friends.” At first I wasn’t sure if I should reach for it. Maybe it was some kind of trap. “I’ve seen you from the window sneaking out food after school.” With one hand tucked in my pockets I played with the bulge of pennies Mr. Jay had given me. She dropped the bag on the table, then swiped my Pepsi from my hand and took a long swig. “You’d better take it over before Mom gets home.” Terri’s eyes got wide. “Think of the baby.”

  Edite knew where Agnes was staying. It pissed me off that she would snitch us out to Terri. But what if Edite hadn’t said anything? What if Terri had figured it all out herself? If she had, it meant others would too. And James didn’t want anyone to find out.

  “Suit yourself,” she said.

  “Are you going to say anything? I mean, we’re taking care of Agnes. Her parents may come back and punish her for ratting—”

  “No, I won’t tell. Agnes has enough on her plate. She’s probably better off now that she’s been abandoned. Senhora Gloria’s a piece of shit for doing that. And that perv for a husband is an asshole. I just can’t figure out what a guy like James is thinking, taking Agnes in. But then again I don’t get what he’s doing with a bunch of kids like you.”

  I didn’t have an answer for her. I needed to go, deliver the food and warn James that Terri had figured it out. Usually I left the food in the backyard behind the garbage can, where James would find it. This time I’d risk delivering it in person, before my parents got home.

  “Hey!”

  “What?” I hugged the bag with both arms.

  “Be careful,” she said.

  Only when I had made my way through our backyard and into the laneway did I allow myself to breathe.

  It was too early for the worshippers to start gathering. Some people had left flowers and prayer candles at our garage door, the same kind we’d light at my grandmother’s headstone at the cemetery. Some were still lit.

  Pressing my ear to the metal door of James’s garage gave nothing away. In the month since school had started, all the promised fun had vanished. When we were there James asked us to watch our language. He seemed to think Agnes was delicate. The world can be cruel, he said. Ricky had given James a large flannel sheet with cowboys and Indians going at each other. James had hung the sheet up along the fold of the peaked roof to create a floating wall. Agnes slept on one side. Manny told me he had found a cot mattress in the Patch, folded up like a jelly roll cake. He hoisted it up through the loft opening, all by himself. Manny knew which day to pick up the clothes and sheets, all crumpled and packed in a garbage bag next to the shiny blue trunk. Ricky was in charge of delivering James’s rent money to Red on the first of the month. So far he’d only had to do that once. Ricky d
idn’t make coffee any longer—the smell bothered Agnes—but I caught him once using Lemon Pledge around the garage, even though James just had a couple of workbenches, a scarred table, and a broken rocking chair Manny had salvaged from the laneway. When he thought we weren’t looking, Ricky would drop money into the crock James kept on a shelf. Manny kept adding to the pot, not so secretly too, earnings from the bikes he stole then sold. James had shown Manny how to sand down the serial numbers with a file. He’d told Manny to spray-paint the bike frames—You’ll get more for them—but that had stopped now, since the fumes weren’t good for Agnes or the baby. I dropped the coins my father let me keep into the crock too. I made sure Manny and Ricky saw me do it, which wasn’t the way I was taught; when the church collection basket came my way, my mother told me it wasn’t nice to show people how much I was giving.

  The handful of times I saw James, I’d ask him if there was anything more I could do. James told me I was doing enough, bringing food for him and Agnes. Once, he was in such a good mood he caught me by the waist near the Patch and lifted me into the air. “You got God on your side,” he chuckled. “I can’t take you away from that.” He let me slide down his body till my toes touched the gravel. “But anything you need, just ask, man.” My waist burned where his hands had grabbed me.

  It started to rain. Drops were coming down hard, ringing across the roof and against the garage door like bullets. I looked over my shoulder before I lifted the door. I ducked underneath and closed the door behind me. I could barely make out Streisand’s voice cooing her “Love Theme.” I wasn’t quite sure where it was coming from. The garage smelled of warm wood and socks.

  “Did you forget something?” Agnes’s uncertain voice spilled from the loft.