by Su J. Sokol
*
“We’ll be breaking up into different language groups to facilitate communication. Many people have English as a common second tongue, so you can go with them,” the group leader, Pascal, tells me. He’s youngish, small in stature, his looks unremarkable, but he has a certain physical presence that inspires confidence.
I answer him in French. “J’veux pas … I’d prefer not to speak English. Please …”
“None of the others will be speaking French for this exercise.”
“How about Spanish? Yo hablo español. Can I go with the hispanophones?”
“Did you speak Spanish in New York? Well enough to express yourself?”
“My best friend teaches high-school Spanish. We spoke it together sometimes.”
“OK, go ahead and join the hispanophone group, then.”
We’re sitting in a circle on rickety, wooden chairs. They look like they were borrowed from ancient classrooms. I’m the newest member of the group. Pascal has us introduce ourselves. Name the country we’re from. We’re divided by gender as well as language. The absence of women unbalances me. But everyone seems friendly. They smile to hear a New Yorker speaking Spanish flavoured by that unmistakeable accent—half New York and half Puerto Rico.
Pascal asks us what we each miss most from our home countries.
Why think about this? There are so many amazing things here. The men in my group are mostly talking about food. I think the food in Montréal is exceptional. Much better than the food in the United States. Even than in New York. Except the pizza, anyway.
Now they’re talking about the beauty of the natural environments they left behind. Mountains, forests, plant life. Yeah, right. I don’t need to cry over that. Not where I come from. Should I miss the smell of garbage during the stifling summer months? Or maybe the hot blacktop, literally melting under my sandals? Giving off toxic odours. Speaking of toxins, maybe I should miss the pesticides they sprayed over everything one wet spring. They said it was to kill mosquitoes supposedly carrying a dangerous flu. Meanwhile, dozens of young and elderly asthmatics were killed when they over-dumped the stuff in some of the poorest neighbourhoods.
It’s my turn now. They’re all looking at me. What should I say I miss? I glance up at the ceiling, notice a trapezoidal-shaped water stain that reminds me of Prospect Park. I do love that park, but there are a lot of beautiful parks here, and none of them sprayed with pesticides.
For some reason, I talk about biking to work. The energy of the city during the morning rush. The smell of muffins. How if you stand on your pedals and look hard all the way down Thirteenth Street, you can see the sun lighting the river, illuminating everything in its path.
“That sounds beautiful,” Pascal says.
“New York City is very ugly,” I respond. “An ugly place.”
“Tell us about something you loved from back home,” he asks.
I shrug, unable to respond. I feel guilty, though. They’re all looking at me, waiting for me to share a good memory, something that will help them bear their own losses more easily. It reminds me of being in front of the classroom again, of having all those eyes on me, full of expectation, so I say, “My job, my kids. I was a teacher. I … I miss the feeling of hope that things could be better for them. That I could be part of making it better.”
“And were you? Did you help make things better?”
“I don’t know,” I answer. I think about Fari and Nina at the demo in Battery Park. “Not alone, anyway. There were my colleagues. My friends. Without them …” I remember Erin’s hand on my arm that last night. And leaning against Philip’s shoulder. No, I won’t think about that.
“You had mentioned your best friend who teaches Spanish,” Pascal says.
I want him to leave me alone. Isn’t my turn over yet? Let’s go back to talking about mountains, forests, safe things like that. But it’s too late because now I see Philip’s features on the face of every man in this room. And I can’t stop thinking about his goodness, his sense of humour, his fierce loyalty, his strength when I leaned against him. And his hot tears on my neck the last time I saw him.
I’m standing up, shaking with fury, my knuckles white from gripping the back of the chair. How can they have taken all this from me? My students, my friends, Philip? It’s so unfair. I had a good life! I was happy! Janie and the kids were happy! I try to sit back down, to fade into the background, but something’s wrong—my chair’s gone. A wave of panic hits me as I realize that I’ve flung it across the room where it now lies broken against the far wall.
Half the men in my group have jumped to their feet, some looking at me, others at the chair. Two start walking towards me. I stumble backwards, my heart beating in my ears. Pascal waves them off and approaches me himself with slow, cautious steps, his expression somewhere between fear and concern. I hear Philip’s voice in my head, saying “Pull yourself the fuck together.” Heat rushes to my cheeks as I wonder if the chair came close to hitting anyone.
“Lo siento. Lo siento mucho,” I say, moving to recover the chair.
“It’s OK,” Pascal responds. “No need to apologize.”
“Laisse moi, let me fix it.” I’m having some linguistic confusion, switching between Spanish and French. I hold pieces of the chair in my hands. A leg, a wooden support. “I can fix this. I think I can.”
“It’s OK, Laek. Can I touch you?”
“What?” I ask.
“For some of the people who come here, a touch can be unsettling.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t freak out. I just want to fix the chair.”
“It’s OK, we’d be happy to have you fix the chair. Just not right now. Come,” Pascal says, putting his hand on my shoulder. “Come back to the group and sit down. I have another chair for you in the meantime.”
I let him lead me back to the circle. His hand on my shoulder steadies me. I feel relieved by this. And I didn’t blank out. Not exactly. I don’t think I was conscious of throwing the chair, but I remember doing it now, when I think back on it. So I wasn’t really gone.
I’m quiet for the rest of the meeting. Session. Whatever it is. I feel tired and ashamed as I listen to the other men talking. With my chair-throwing incident, discussion has turned from food and environment to people. Those left behind. One man talks about his elderly parents, how he may never see them again. And how sad this is for him, especially now that his wife has given birth to their first child. I feel for this man. Though I have no interest in seeing my own parents, wherever the hell they are. But I hope Janie will be able to see hers, that the kids will see their grandparents. I think they will, if things go well. Later, if we succeed in getting permanent residence. We’re very lucky in this respect.
Another man talks about leaving his lover behind. His husband, that is, if his country recognized same-sex marriage.
“Maybe you’ll see him again,” I hear myself saying. “Maybe you can bring him over.”
He looks at me sadly. “He is in prison, amigo. He may never leave that place alive.”
My heart twists inside me. I should have been paying more attention when he said where he was from. And now I should ask him, as Pascal asked me, if he minds being touched. But my body is moving on its own as I squat by his chair and squeeze his shoulder saying: “Don’t give up hope, hermano. Every day you keep going, it’s another small victory. And you’re fighting for him. You see that, don’t you?” Maybe Janie will have an idea of how to help. I think about how, after this session, I can go home to Janie, lie down beside her, but how this man’s bed will be cold and empty. I swallow hard to keep the tears back. Whisper that my partner is a lawyer, that I can introduce him to her and our own lawyer, an expert on asylum. Maybe there’s something that can be done. After a moment he nods, squeezes my shoulder back.
At the end of the meeting, there’s pizza. The one food that’s better in New York. I find that as hungry as I’d been before, I don’t have much of an appetite now. Pascal approaches me.
<
br /> “You don’t like pizza?”
“No, I like it fine. It’s just that … I’m vegetarian. So the pepperoni doesn’t work for me.”
“That’s a problem easily solved,” he says, redistributing the round pieces of pepperoni from two of the slices onto others in the pie.
One of the men from the group is standing beside me, listening to this exchange.
“Good. More for us carnivores,” he says, grabbing a slice heavily loaded with pepperoni.
Another man comes over. Offers around a drink from his bottle. The liquid is clear, but it’s definitely not water that’s warming me now from the inside. I pick up one of the denuded slices. Take a bite. It’s pretty good. Only a faint taste of smoky meat lodged in the mozzarella cheese. Hunger, as they say, is the best spice. That, and good company. I lean back against the wall and imagine I can feel Philip’s hand on my shoulder.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Siri
It’s “mardi en français,” one of the two days during the week that my parents have ruled are French-only. I feel like I live in some kind of mind-control dictatorship. I’ve told my parents I can’t speak French and I won’t learn it. So I’m sitting at the kitchen table doing my homework, my math homework that is, and pretending I can’t understand a word they’re saying. Meanwhile, my head automatically translates everything into English.
“How many dollars did you gain?” Mommy asks.
Daddy pulls some bills out of his pocket and smoothes them out on the table.
“Not much, but every dollar helps.”
“You seem very fatigued. Did you do much of, of raking?”
I notice that Mommy can’t get through one sentence without using some English words.
“Yes, but I did some of it for free.”
“Shit! Another time?”
“I had promised some seniors that I’d return when more leaves fell. They needed me. It’s important to finish your work.”
“Oh, Laek.”
“And you? Did you search for your cheque today? For the catering that you did?”
“For what?”
“The cooking. That you did for those community events.”
“Oh yes. I was paid. But the dollars were not a lot more than I paid. For the foods.”
My parents don’t know anything about how to earn a profit—Daddy raking for free and Mommy buying all organic, cooking fancy meals and charging almost nothing. Meanwhile, I earned a whole bunch of money with my garage sale and lemonade stand this weekend. Mommy tried to talk me into not asking for my allowance since I made so much, but why should I be punished for being enterprising? Anyhow, Gabriel and I have other uses for my money. Which reminds me, I better beam him my math homework.
Daddy is taking some stuff out of his sacoche now. Food, it looks like. Some fruits, vegetables, cheese, other stuff.
“But, it is something expensive that you have?” Mommy asks, in her broken French.
“I have vegetarian pâté, brie, Oka cheese …”
“How did you buy? Was many dollars?”
“No. Not really. I paid like nothing.”
“Like nothing? What do you mean, ‘like nothing’?”
“Nothing. I mean nothing. I paid nothing.”
“Laek, what you have done? You have stole?”
Whoa, this conversation is getting interesting, but I can’t let them know I understand French, so I keep looking down at my work.
“No. Of course not. It was free.”
“Free? Where did you find? Say the truth to me.”
“At the Jean-Talon Market. At the end of the day.”
“Oh. Oh. Did you, did you dumpster dive?”
“Yeah. That is exact.”
What! Daddy dumpster dived for this food? I have to say something, but I don’t want them to know I understand French. Wait, I can get away with it because Mommy used English when she said “dumpster dive.”
“Do I have this straight? Are you saying you dumpster dived, Daddy?”
“Yes. It’s OK. The food is good.”
“Speak English. I don’t speak French.”
“At least make an effort, Siri.”
“Je. Ne. Parle. Pas. Français!” I refuse to give in to their craziness.
“Siri, calme-toi.”
“Did this food actually come from the garbage? I think I deserve to know that, even if I don’t speak French!”
Mommy caves and talks to me in English. “There’s nothing wrong with this food.”
“Then why was it in the garbage?”
“Some of the items were expired.”
“Expired? Like dead?”
“I mean the date stamped on the product. The stores aren’t supposed to sell things when the date is expired. But it’s still perfectly good, especially if we use it right away.”
“The vegetables look like they’re going rotten.”
“We can just cut off the bad parts.”
“I refuse to eat food from the garbage. It’s gross.”
“It would be a sin to let good food go to waste.”
“A sin? You want me to eat it for religious reasons? You don’t even believe in God.”
“A crime, then. It’s just wrong to waste food. One problem with a consumer society …”
“Oh, I get it. You want me to eat it for political reasons. Just like you took me from my friends and home and are forcing me to go to school in French for political reasons.”
“Siri, stop being unreasonable. We’re a bit short now and this food is perfectly good.”
“So get yourselves real jobs. And if you can’t find any here, let’s go back home. You had good jobs there and didn’t force Simon and me to eat garbage!”
Simon looks up sadly and then looks down again. He’s reading a book on his school screen about whales and seals. While I’m pretending not to understand any French, Simon’s pretending that he isn’t even in the room.
“Ça suffit, Siri. If you don’t want to eat this food, don’t,” Daddy says.
I pretend I can’t understand him, but get up to leave anyway.
“You can’t make me eat garbage!” I run into my room and slam the door behind me, throwing myself onto my bed.
I’d like to speak to Michael, but I’m not allowed to even text until the weekend. I can’t wait to tell him about this newest type of child abuse my parents are doing to me. I go through my school bag. Yes! I thought there was the rest of a candy bar in there. After I finish eating it, I beam a message to Gabriel.
My parents r making me eat food from d garbage. I hate them. Can I come over?
I wait. No response.
I despise my school. Aside from Gabriel and a few others, the kids are either boring, or annoying aliens. There are no normal kids, no kids like my friends at home. And everyone in my class breaks up into little immigrant cliques. All the Chinese kids sit in one place, the kids from Roumanie in another, the Muslims all together, whatever. The Chinese kids do their schoolwork, are good at math and the girls all hide their mouths when they laugh. The kids from Roumanie speak French better than the rest of us and act superior. The kids who speak Spanish are not too bad, I guess. And the Philippines, some of them play basketball well, even though most of them are short. But that’s the other thing. Where are all the black kids? There are hardly any in my class, and that feels weird. This whole place, this whole country, is way too white. And the few blacks are mostly Haitian. They speak French, but in a weird way. Same with the African blacks. They don’t act like my friends at home. They’re like, exotic or something, and their voices sound low and angry. Not like Brooklyn voices at all. At home, there are all kinds of kids, but they’re all Brooklynites to me.
Gabriel finally beams me back. He says I can’t come over but that he’ll bring me something tomorrow. And he asks me to beam him the French homework too. So I sit down and do the French homework. It’s pretty easy and doesn’t take long. After I beam it to him, since I don’t plan on handing in any French hom
ework myself, I delete the original. Send it right into the trash. Let my parents dumpster dive for that.
THIRTY-NINE
Simon
I run inside our building with my jacket over my head when the rain starts. I hope the garlic we planted on the roof garden doesn’t drown. More than anything though, I hope it stops raining so that we can go back outside to play street hockey. I was finally gonna get to play goalie. In Brooklyn, we’d never just go out with a bunch of kids and play on the street. All the stuff we did was scheduled way ahead of time on Mommy’s screen. Here, kids just go out and play with each other when they feel like it, and all different ages play together.
I turn to ask Siri whether she thinks it might stop raining and realize that she’s still outside. I stick my head out the door and call to her in French and then in English, but she doesn’t come so I go out to get her. She looks at me and then at the trees and then at all the wet leaves on the ground and says, “I guess that’s that.” I don’t know if she means there goes our hockey game or that’s it for the leaves. I have the feeling it’s something else, something I don’t get. She seems hyper-upset for just a hockey game.
At suppertime, the rain has stopped but the wind is still blowing fierce, knocking the tree branches all around and sending the leaves flying. It makes me think of a shakedown. It’s like the trees are being forced to let go of their leaves or get pushed to the ground. Maybe some trees will even fall or get killed. Then the rain comes back again, and any leaves that had been able to hang on against the wind now fall down with the weight of all that water.
Alone in my room at night, the wind sounds loud and scary, but it’s when a banging noise starts inside my room that I really get spooked. It sounds like someone getting beaten with a phaser stick. I run into Siri’s room. She tells me to go back to bed, that it’s just the heat starting up in the radiator. I know she thinks I’m being a baby, but I’m still not used to sleeping in a room all by myself. Plus, she wasn’t there this summer. She doesn’t know what things were like.
